First published 2009
Ben Steele leaves his Montana ranch to join the army and see the world. Instead, he finds himself trapped on the Philippine peninsula of Bataan in early 1942, sketching scenes of America's first major land battle of World War II. When 76,000 Filipino and American soldiers surrender after four months of fighting, Steele faces a new kind of war. He must survive the Death March and over three years of captivity under brutal conditions. Starvation rations, disease, torture, and forced labor test every prisoner. While General MacArthur operates far from the camps, Steele uses his artist's eye to document the suffering around him. The story also follows Japanese soldiers caught in the same conflict, revealing how war inflicts pain across all sides. Steele's journey from young cowboy to prisoner of war strips away romantic notions of military glory and exposes the raw human cost of survival.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war, military-fiction
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, fish-out-of-water
Setting: Bataan, Montana, Philippine
Period: 1942, World War II
480 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: death, torture, violence