Among the horrors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the effects of battle on the soldiers involved, personal stories that often get lost in the broader debates about the politics, morality and rationale of the wars. Even when post-traumatic stress disorder is part of the conversation, it can be as impersonal as the bureaucratic machine that is supposed to be dealing with PTSD. In his debut novel, A Hard and Heavy Thing, Matthew J. Hefti has given combatants an authentic and heartbreaking voice that manages to tell a war story of intimate and human proportions.
Levi Hartwick returns from Iraq and Afghanistan to his small Midwestern town years after rescuing his friend from a burning Humvee. What is most painful for Levi, though, upon returning is not his PTSD, nightmares, memories or lack of direction. He is most disturbed and disoriented by seeing his old friend again. Wracked with guilt over what he figures was his tactical mistake that led to his friend's injury, Levi must ask this man for forgiveness in order to move on. But the only way Levi can seem to face him is through a long letter, which spells out the desire he has to end his own life.
Hefti seamlessly weaves excerpts from this suicide note into the novel's narrative to create the illusion that Levi is talking to himself from the future. The story, then, is not only about the war, or the effects and symptoms of PTSD. It is about regret and guilt, and how much of a cruel joke it is that only hindsight is 20/20. --Josh Potter