The White Donkey

Starred review from April 25, 2016
Pulling from his own experiences as a Marine in Iraq, debut author Uriarte combines a casual, straightforward dramatic style with clear, no-frills art that draws readers into his characters’ everyday experiences and then wallops them with the tragedy of ordinary life. Abe has enlisted for reasons he doesn’t understand, but explains it as looking for something that’s missing. Alongside his buddy Garcia, Abe’s journey through training, experience in combat, and home visits is a long odyssey during which he becomes displaced from his old life. The military lingo that dominates much of the dialogue can seem like a foreign language to a civilian, but that’s crucial to the story, defining the insular alien world Abe has entered. Both respectful to the military and its role and sympathetic to the delicacy of the young soldiers, the story’s power lies in a middle-ground view of the ongoing social conflict, seeking to bridge understanding on both sides. Agent: Katherine Boyle, Veritas Literary.

Starred review from May 15, 2016
Possessed of a clean, simple comics-realist style, this graphic novel's creator did two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Marines, in the infantry in 2007 and as a combat artist-photographer in 2009. In 2010, he launched the webcomic Terminal Lance. Despite its satire of the service, the Marine Corps Times soon picked it up. Its principals, lance corporals Abe and Garcia, were originally conceived for this somber book some five years in the making. Uriarte's experiences, especially the incident of the wandering creature of its title, inform the book deeply, though he was not haunted by the donkey, like Abe. The two Oregonians, one unskilled working poor, the other lower-middle-class, don't know each other before the marines, but they become very good buddies, with Garcia, inured to hardship, almost a big brother to the school-smarter Abe, who grouses a lot, to the point of becoming an ugly American to the Iraqis. Garcia, self-described as dumb, is characteristically more down-to-earth, as armed-service-smart as he is street-smart. The ultimate breach between them puts Abe nearly round the bend, pondering his next, possibly mortal decision. Marvelously realized in black, white, and gray already, the finished book will feature sparingly added color, too, to heighten mood and atmosphere. A masterpiece in the old sense of a work that proves a craftsman has become a master.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)