cover image God Is Not Here: A Soldier’s Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War

God Is Not Here: A Soldier’s Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War

Bill Russell Edmonds. Pegasus, $27.95 (296p) ISBN 978-1-60598-774-3

This “is one of the best [books] to come out of the Iraq war,” Pulitzer Prize–winner Thomas Ricks writes in his foreword to this intense wartime and post-war memoir, and it is certainly one the most brutally frank and disturbing. Edmonds, an active duty U.S. Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel, provides intimate details of his work in Mosul, Iraq, from May 2005 to May 2006, when he—then a captain—served as an adviser to Iraqi intelligence forces, primarily helping with interrogations of terror suspects. Things did not go well, as Edmonds “lived according to Iraqi rules,” and “interrogated with only one rule—do what was necessary.” This blunt, taut account, based on Edmonds’s journals, addresses the profound ramifications Edmonds’s work in the war have had on his emotional well-being. The chapters effectively flash back and forth between Iraq in 2005–2006 and his 2011 tour-of-duty in Germany, where, he says, he “quite literally lost [his] mind.” There is redemption of sorts at the end, partially due to Edmonds writing the book to try to come to terms with his emotional demons, but he makes it clear that his experiences in Iraq have left a permanent mark on his psyche. [em]Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group. (May) [/em]