New York, NY: Vintage (2019)

As new in paperback.

From the National Book Award finalist, a breathtakingly spare and shattering new novel that explores the unseen aftereffects—and unacknowledged casualties—of war.

Eden was once big and bold and physical. His fellow Marines nicknamed him “BASE Jump.” He loved to wrap his body around his wife’s when they slept at night. But now Eden lies in a bed, unable to move or speak. His wife Mary spends every day on the sofa in his hospital room. He has never even met their young daughter. And he will never again see the friend and fellow soldier who didn’t make it back home—the soldier who narrates the novel as he waits for Eden to finally, mercifully die and join him in whatever comes after.

But one Christmas, on the single day Mary is not at his bedside, Eden’s re-ordered consciousness flickers back to life. As he struggles to find a way to communicate, some troubling truths about his marriage—and about his life before he went to war—come to the surface. Is Eden the same man he once was: a husband, a friend, a father-to-be? When so much is lost, what makes a life worth living?

A piercingly insightful, deeply felt meditation on loyalty and betrayal, love, friendship, and fear, Waiting for Eden is a heartbreaking, humane, and subtly hopeful tour de force.