SOFT TARGETS

Inks sets a collection of short stories in and around the United States’ war in Afghanistan.

In these stories, the author, a Purple Heart recipient, conveys dozens of aspects of the lives of American soldiers serving in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Some of the stories are earnest and personal, like the opening “Blood Wings,” in which a young man named Matthew Clifton leaves his sleepy home on a cattle farm in Montana (“Like the livestock we kept,” he reflects, “I sometimes felt they were raising me healthy but behind a corral where I could do no damage or break their tender hearts by running away”), endures basic training, and receives the call to join the Airborne division, a coveted assignment despite its high toll of physical injury (“Since day one, injured trainees were background props to any airborne setting. These poor souls could be seen crutching around the barracks or lingering at the DFAC over lukewarm coffee…).” In other pieces, Inks employs a comic voice, as in the picaresque story “Jack Fleming Lives!” in which two bored servicemen invent a sterling figure named Jack Fleming, watch in amazement as he becomes a legend, promptly decide to kill him off, and watch as his legend only grows: “It seems the only thing we did by killing Jack Fleming was cement his legacy,” one reflects. “I’m seeing little candle-lit vigils outside of MWR hooches.” Regardless of the storytelling register the author chooses, the stories are uniformly taut and authentic, and the prose is eloquent; when the protagonist of “A Fobbit’s Report” reflects on “traumatized units struggling to make sense of their lives after being re-subjected to the petty tyrannies of garrison life,” Inks concisely summarizes the jarring contrast they experience: “I just saw my friend’s face cleaved in two and you’re grilling me about having my hands in my pockets?” This kind of you-are-there verisimilitude is bracing.

A very effective fictional exploration of an ordinary U.S. soldier’s experience serving in Afghanistan.