The first-person, present-tense narration takes readers steadily toward the core of what has happened to Bo. With a little help from best friends Pearl and Zim, he joins Bo on his personal hegira. When Bo announces his intention of hiking the Appalachian Trail, Levi (who has snooped in Bo's Internet history) knows better. The person who arrives bears little resemblance to his previous self, holing up in his room and barely communicating. Now, Boaz-renamed Bo-is returning home from the Middle East. Levi has felt the distance grow between them prior to and throughout his enlistment. (Sept.Levi’s older brother Boaz enlisted in the Marines after graduating from high school rather than attend an elite university as expected. Levi’s growing comprehension of Boaz’s internal turmoil is gracefully and powerfully evoked. Refraining from making political judgments about current conflicts, Reinhardt personalizes a soldier’s traumas in terms civilians can understand. Walking side by side with his brother all the way to Washington, D.C., visiting ex-Marines and soldiers’ families along the way, Levi learns more about his brother’s experiences-like why he’s stopped riding in automobiles-than Boaz can explain outright. Using a route marked on a map Boaz left behind, Levi follows Boaz’s path and eventually catches up with him. After isolating himself from the family, Boaz announces his plans to hike the Appalachian Trail, yet Levi suspects his brother has another itinerary in mind. But he seems to be a different person: withdrawn and uncommunicative.
Three years after joining the Marines and serving overseas, Levi Katznelson’s brother, Boaz, returns to his Boston suburb a hero. With exceptional sensitivity, Reinhardt (How to Build a House) chronicles a soldier’s troubling homecoming, in this timely novel told from his younger brother’s point of view.
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