JAGGED WIRE

Bamiyan Province, Afghanistan, 2010. A small New Zealand Army team holds a forward post in a valley where the wind carries voices across distances that shouldn't be possible, and where a single decision can cost more than anyone is willing to admit. Staff Sergeant Noah Ngata leads men bound tighter than rank ever could; each other is the only thing standing between them and the silence. When they choose to protect Dina, they learn exactly what that choice costs everyone else. Mohammad, their interpreter, carries two languages and two worlds inside him. Forood, an Afghan National Police officer, becomes an unlikely ally in a war with no clean answers. Every man carries his own reckoning to going home, if going home is still on the table. Jagged Wire is a literary, military novel about duty, moral injury, and the weight of decisions made in impossible circumstances, in the tradition of Tim O'Brien, Phil Klay, and Kevin Powers, told with a distinctly Southern Hemisphere voice. Beyond the wire, no one walks away clean.