The Heart You Carry Home

November 9, 2015
In a powerful novel about soldiers returning from war, Miller shows that sometimes the worst wounds of war are the ones not visible from the outside. After Becca's troubled husband, Ben, returns from a second tour in Iraq and attacks her in his sleep, she runs to her father, Vietnam veteran King, for solace and advice. King's carrying his own deep scars from his tours of duty that destroyed his marriage to Becca's mother. When King and several fellow veterans head west to visit their ailingâand certifiably insaneâformer commanding officer, Becca tags along and learns more than she bargained for. The commanding officer calls himself the ruler of Kleos, a desert commune that one character terms "the heart of darkness." On the journey, Becca learns about her father's wounds, and shares her ownâand upon arriving at Kleos, she comes face to face with her estranged husband. Miller's vivid characters illustrate the emotional and physical damages brought home by returning veterans, forcing the reader into harrowing, moving places. This novel will haunt readers long after the final page is turned.

September 1, 2015
On the road with PTSD: vets on bikes travel to the heart of darkness to heal their wounds. Miller (The Year of the Gadfly, 2012, etc.) starts her novel with a tease: a letter to someone named Willy from someone named CO Proudfoot that includes the unexplained line: "I wish you hadn't ruined our friendship with all that. But you did, so here I am." This epistolary thread is one of several plotlines in this complicated novel about damaged veterans and the people who love them. The series of letters reveals bit by bit a horrific event in Vietnam that affected several of the characters, foremost a man named King Keller. Known in his hometown "as the Landmine due to his unpredictable outbursts," King is the father of 21-year-old Becca, recently married to Ben, himself an Iraq vet and also the son of a Vietnam vet. Ben's storyline details the experiences in Iraq that have turned a gentle young man into a drunken wife-beater. After Ben attacks her, Becca runs to her dad's house and ends up joining him and a posse of vets on a cross-country motorcycle trip to a desert compound in Utah. There, the author of the letters, CO Proudfoot himself, is running a cult, offering vets like King a form of healing "as powerful and terrible-and perhaps as unthinkable-as his trauma." Searching for both his runaway wife and for his lost sense of self, Ben is on his way to the compound as well. So is Becca's mother, Jeanine, who gave up on King years ago and joined a Christian group called the Hands of God Church. Once everybody meets up, the story takes a dizzying turn into Game of Thrones territory, as a violent contest involving heavy hallucinogens in a heated hogan is held to determine who will take the place of the CO when he steps down. Strong, well-developed portraits of veterans' experiences and relationships are undermined by a lurid, unrealistic ending.

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October 15, 2015

Becca, a young woman living in rural Tennessee, has unwittingly married a man like her father--a war veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On the run from her newly minted marriage, Becca seeks refuge with her father, who only recently stepped back into her life. King is about to embark on a pilgrimage to a mysterious locale. Joining him on this road trip of sorts via motorcycle is his friend and fellow veteran Reno. King doesn't want Becca along for the ride, but with the help of Reno she tags along anyway. In no time her estranged husband, Ben, is hot on her trail. Could her unlikely destination, cloaked in mythology and cultism, help save her marriage? With well-written characters (drawn from the author's experience traveling with the motorcycle and veterans' group Rolling Thunder) and a plot that builds to an unusual denouement, Miller's second novel (after The Year of the Gadfly) is as unpredictable as it is authentic. VERDICT For readers who enjoy books exploring the father/daughter relationship as well as those who are interested in fiction dealing with PTSD.--Karen Core, Detroit P.L.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2015
Miller (The Year of the Gadfly, 2012) offers an impressively fresh perspective on soldiers returning from war by delivering a memorable heroine, Becca Keller, the twentysomething daughter of a Vietnam vet. She has just rushed into a marriage with Ben after his second tour in Iraq. During a midnight flashback, Ben pounces on Becca, and she's left bruised and uncharacteristically lost. She hides in the company of her father, King, a quiet biker about to set out on a mysterious group pilgrimage into the desert. As Becca gets swept up in the ride and gradually learns about the dark secret at the heart of where they are headed, Ben follows behind, and we learn about the traumas experienced by both men during war. Miller conveys the community and freedom that King and his fellow vets find on the road, and Becca's induction into that group provides the novel's strong center. Although the wartime backstories for both vets lack the same credence, Miller's effort at creating an intersection between these two generations is well done and worthwhile.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)