I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

Wintric Ellis joins the army as soon as he graduates from high school, saying goodbye to his girlfriend, Kristen, and to the backwoods California town whose borders have always been the limits of his horizon. Deployed in Afghanistan two years into a directionless war, he struggles to find his bearings in a place where allies could at any second turn out to be foes. Two career soldiers, Dax and Torres, take Wintric under their wing. Together, these three men face an impossible choice: risk death or commit a harrowing act of war. The aftershocks echo long after each returns home to a transfigured world. I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them is a vital meditation on the weight of war and a humane tale of love, family, and connection at any cost.

Jesse Goolsby's fiction and essays have appeared in Narrative, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Richard Bausch Short Story Prize, the John Gardner Memorial Prize in Fiction, and other honors. A U.S. Air Force officer, he lives in Tallahassee.