eBranch Blog

October 31, 2006

WY Boyd Award for Military Fiction

We have added a new book list for the W.Y. Boyd Literary Award. It is awarded annually for excellence in military fiction by the American Library History Roundtable of the American Library Association.

2006
Nick Arvin. Articles of War
Capturing the reality of war with a fidelity and power that echoes the best of classic war writing, this haunting novel brings to life the terrors of a young soldier in shocking, almost hallucinatory detail. George Tilson is an eighteen-year-old Iowan farm boy who enlists in the army during World War II and is sent to Normandy shortly after D-Day. Nicknamed ?Heck? because of his reluctance to curse, he is a typical soldier, willing to do his duty without fuss or much musing about grand goals. The night before he is trucked into the combat zone, Heck meets a young French refugee and her family, an encounter that unsettles him greatly. It is during his first, horrific exposure to combat that Heck discovers a dark truth about himself: He is a coward.