Author Event: David Abrams

Butte author and member-owner David Abrams will read from his new novel, Brave Deeds, followed by a book signing, between noon to 1 on Saturday, August 26, 2017.

Abrams is visiting independent bookstores throughout the Pacific Northwest to promote his new book about six soldiers crossing wartorn Baghdad—without permission and without maps or compasses—to attend the funeral of their leader, killed in a bomb blast the week before.

Brave Deeds is a compelling novel of war, brotherhood, and America. Spanning eight hours, the novel follows a squad of six AWOL soldiers as they attempt to cross war-torn Baghdad on foot to attend the funeral of their leader, Staff Sergeant Rafe Morgan. Cut off from all communication with their company headquarters back on the base, they find themselves struggling to survive in an inhospitable landscape. As the men make their way to the funeral, they recall the most ancient of warriors while portraying a cross-section of twenty-first-century America—sometimes strong, sometimes weak, but subject to the same human flaws as all of us.

Moving, thoughtful, funny, and smart, Brave Deeds is a gripping story of combat and perseverance, and an important addition to the oeuvre of contemporary war fiction.

And here's Booklist with some kind words for the novel:

In Fobbit (2012), Abrams caricatured military personnel who avoided combat overseas. His second novel confronts another underexplored aspect of war: the unlikely bonds formed by mutinous allegiance. Six soldiers steal a Hummer and sneak off base to attend their esteemed commander’s memorial service. Then their vehicle breaks down in the heart of Baghdad. In a city where everyone is a potential enemy, the men risk their careers, and their lives, to get to the service on foot. Battling hunger and paranoia, the squad episodically recalls their daring adventure and Rafe’s violent demise, portraying a complex man who secretly cared for stray dogs and avenged the deaths of innocent victims. Sharing their stories as a collective voice, each man bears his own burden: there’s the notorious overeater, Cheever; impulsively violent Fish; Park the stoic; desperately romantic O, who can’t get over his ex; Drew, who married the wrong woman; and their sententious makeshift leader, Arrow, who spurs them on. Just when the squad’s plights become darkly, hilariously absurd, Abrams surprises with pathos and tenderness. This is military fiction at its truest.

In 2005, Abrams joined the 3rd Infantry Division and deployed to Baghdad in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The journal he kept during that year formed the blueprint for the novel which would later become known as Fobbit.

He retired in 2008 after a 20-year career in the active-duty Army as a journalist. David Abrams now lives in Butte, Montana with his wife.