The recent Iraq and Afghan wars made "embedded journalism," with reporters riding along with soldiers at the front lines, a new genre of reportage. In Demon Camp, Jennifer Percy embeds herself into the post-combat life of Caleb Daniels, a helicopter maintenance enlistee who humped his way through SERE (Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape) school to get into the illustrious "Night Stalkers" Special Forces 160th Regiment.
After two Iraq deployments and eight in Afghanistan, Daniels came home with a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Haunted, suicidal, unable to work or stay married, he was convinced he was controlled by "demons" who included his dead best friend, an unarmed Iraqi he killed, even his harshly critical father. He found some measure of peace at a trailer house parish in tiny Portal, Ga., where Pentecostal preacher Tim Mather claims to have exorcized 5,000 demons.
Percy drives with Daniels cross-country, gathering other suicidal veterans to have their demons purged by Mather. Percy briefly succumbs to the "easy, luminous desire to be saved [where] everything is soft-looking and cries with the Holy Spirit." But she always steps back from the personal to record what she sees and hears.
If the traditional VA hospital treatments don't offer much to Caleb Daniels and similarly broken vets, the Demon Camp seems to hold their nightmares at bay. In Percy's telling, it's a crazy place--or maybe just a place full of crazies. You can't walk away from Percy's strong debut without feeling like you've spent a frightening moment inside the heads of soldiers who come home from war. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kans.