Recent American wars have made the term "redeployment" a household word. Soldiers are moved around, withdrawn and redistributed in one seemingly endless war. Phil Klay's stunningly fine debut collection of short stories, Redeployment, uses the word "war" both as military language and as the world his characters inhabit. These 18 often brutal stories are told by varied narrators, and the tone throughout is understated, quiet, reserved--in counterbalance to the horrific events being described.
Klay, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, focuses on the men who have to enforce government policies, the decisions of others. The final, powerful story, "Ten Klicks South," is about dead soldiers coming home. Personal effects are gathered, wedding rings removed, bodies prepared for transport. "And as it was unloaded off the bird, the Marines would have stood silent and still, just as we had in Fallujah.... And they would have stood silent and still in Kuwait. And they would have stood silent and still in Germany, and silent and still at Dover Air Base.... Marines and sailors and soldiers and airmen would have stood at attention as it traveled to the family of the fallen, where the silence, the stillness, would end."
Redeployment won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction. Truly well-deserved. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher