A powerful debut novel about four young soldiers serving in Afghanistan, and the devastating aftermath of war.

Sixteen-year-old Plinko, attending basic training in the summer before high school starts up again in the fall, acquired his nickname when he happened to mention The Price is Right to another recruit. Feeling adrift from his own family after graduation, Plinko moves in with an older soldier, where he forges an unlikely group of friends: Walsh, who moves in shortly after Plinko does; Abdi, whose Somalian immigrant parents often welcome the group of young men over for dinner; and the unpredictable and gun-loving Krug, who is brash and exasperating yet magnetic. The four are variously involved with the military – Plinko, for instance, works as a reservist on weekends and Wednesday evenings – and they fill their days with school, part-time jobs, watching movies, ordering pizza, playing video games late into the night.

And then – 9/11. As the military prepares to move into Afghanistan, the trajectories of the four friends’ lives are changed irrevocably.

Drawn from the author’s experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan, Juiceboxers tenderly traces the story of a young man’s journey from basic training, to the battlefields of Kandahar, to the oil fields of Alberta, braiding together questions of masculinity and militarism, friendship and violence, loss and trauma, ideology and innocence.

Benjamin Hertwig is a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces, a painter, and a PhD student at the University of British Columbia whose writing has recently appeared on NPR, in the New York Times, and won a National Magazine Award in 2017.

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