A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at "the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal"—three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America's most sought-after heroes. For the past two weeks, the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, on this chilly and rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos are guests of America's Team, the Dallas Cowboys, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside the superstar pop group Destiny's Child.
Among the Bravos is the Silver Star–winning hero of Al-Ansakar Canal, Specialist William Lynn, a nineteen-year-old Texas native. Amid clamoring patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and Support Our Troops bumper stickers on their cars, the Bravos are thrust into the company of the Cowboys' hard-nosed businessman/owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a luscious born-again Cowboys cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized pro players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Among these faces Billy sees those of his family—his worried sisters and broken father—and Shroom, the philosophical sergeant who opened Billy's mind and died in his arms at Al-Ansakar.
Over the course of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, and his brothers-in-arms—soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.
Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a devastating portrait of our time, a searing and powerful novel that cements Ben Fountain's reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.
Read an interview with the author HERE.
"In many -- if not all -- big time sports events, the second the action stops here comes the ear-splitting pop songs, the launching of cheap t-shirts, the advertisements racing across the jumbo-tron. You wonder if you're experiencing an actual athletic contest, or if you're merely part of someone's dazzling marketing strategy. Thoughts of this kind race through Billy Lynn's brain as he and the rest of the Army Bravo Company spend an afternoon at Texas Stadium during a two week break from fighting in Iraq. They'd won a crucial battle, though not without consequences, and as guests of the Dallas Cowboys Bravo Company is besieged by grateful fans (grateful if their team is winning, if the weather is nice) with heavy words such as heroic, patriotic, blessed, values, and freedom, freedom, freedom for our way of life. But Billy has discovered that words alone cannot describe exactly what's going on out there in the desert, cannot describe what it's like to hold his buddy as his young life has come to an end on the battlefield.
Bravo Company is being honored and used at the same time. On the plus side, there is a movie deal in the works. On the minus side, every movie studio it seems is trying to ace them right out of the project. The guys are given autographed footballs and other swag, but then have to pose stupidly in front of the camera and shout out someone's pre-written script about God, country, and home. In the end, all the Bravos really want to do is not get blown up during the next part of their extended tour of duty. Billy Lynn's got less than 24 hours to make sense of it all. That's a lot for someone just 19, when the fog of war sometimes makes more sense than what's happening at home.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is already being hailed as this generation's Catch-22 for its darkly comic take not only on war, but what happens back home when you simply start asking the question...why?"
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