Purple Heart

By Patricia McCormick
(Balzer + Bray, Hardcover, 9780061730900, 208pp.)

Publication Date: September 2009

Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Library Binding, Paperback

Categories: Historical - Military & Wars, People & Places - Middle East

Selected by Indie Booksellers for the Autumn 2009 Kids' Indie Next List

“Patricia McCormick reminds us that the war in Iraq is not only about terrorists killing and being killed. The war is also about civilians who may be as deadly as the insurgents, or who might be as innocent as they look. These are the tough choices facing Private Matt Duffy. This book teaches us, young and old alike, just how complicated war is.”

-- Karen Briggs, Great Northern Books and Hobbies, Oscoda, MI

Description

When Private Matt Duffy wakes up in an army hospital in Iraq, he's honored with a Purple Heart. But he doesn't feel like a hero.

There's a memory that haunts him: an image of a young Iraqi boy as a bullet hits his chest. Matt can't shake the feeling that he was somehow involved in his death. But because of a head injury he sustained just moments after the boy was shot, Matt can't quite put all the pieces together.

Eventually Matt is sent back into combat with his squad—Justin, Wolf, and Charlene—the soldiers who have become his family during his time in Iraq. He just wants to go back to being the soldier he once was. But he sees potential threats everywhere and lives in fear of not being able to pull the trigger when the time comes. In combat there is no black-and-white, and Matt soon discovers that the notion of who is guilty is very complicated indeed.

National Book Award Finalist Patricia McCormick has written a visceral and compelling portrait of life in a war zone, where loyalty is valued above all, and death is terrifyingly commonplace.

About the Author

Patricia McCormick is a former journalist who has won much acclaim for her compassionate approach to hard-hitting subjects. To research Purple Heart, she traveled all around the country interviewing soldiers as well as the families of soldiers who went to Iraq and never returned.

Patricia is also the author of the National Book Award Finalist Sold and the bestseller Cut. She lives in New York City.

Praise For Purple Heart…

“McCormick builds the plot subtly and carefully with rich, spare prose.”
-Kirkus Reviews

“Gripping details of existence in a war zone bring this to life.”
-ALA Booklist

“Many of the soldiers in Iraq were not yet teenagers when this war began. What they and the children of Iraq are experiencing is not a political issue-it’s a human issue. PURPLE HEART is a visceral and affecting portrait of their world.”
-—Bob Woodruff, ABC News

“In this suspenseful psychological thriller…McCormick raises moral questions without judgment and will have readers examining not only this conflict but the nature of heroism and war.”
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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