Bring Out the Dog

Starred review from November 6, 2017
In this spellbinding, adrenaline-fueled debut linked collection, Mackin pulls from his own time in the Navy to follow a team of SEALs who, from 2008 to 2011, serve and try to survive together, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Each story explodes with dust and dread as the SEALs are sent to recover the bodies of missing soldiers who were kidnapped south of Kabul; come to blows over chocolate milk in the mess hall; and snub a fellow SEAL who, disoriented in a cornfield one night, accidentally shoots the team’s beloved bomb-sniffing dog. “We could forgive fear, but not the inability to control it,” the narrator explains when the unfortunate man sits waiting with his bags after the incident. Throughout the book, though, it is the language as much as the experience that drives the action, creating taut, almost terrifying suspense. Mackin’s masterful prose is both poetic and aggressive. In one of the collection’s most haunting stories, “Crossing the River No Name,” the men are preparing for an ambush against a group of Taliban fighters emerging from the mountains of Pakistan, “the type of mission that earlier in the war would have been fun.” Before the mission’s end, they will rediscover that, just because the war has become repetitive and futile, it doesn’t mean anyone is safe. In this story, and indeed in the whole unforgettable collection, the men fighting this war know better than anyone how tragic each loss is. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners.

February 15, 2018
Navy veteran Mackin turns in a virtuoso performance with this collection of loosely interconnected, military-themed short stories. In stories based on the author's own wartimeexperiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mackin does a fine job of showing us not only the realities of living in a wartime environment, but also the deep psychological toll the life of a soldier can take on a person. It would be simplistic to call these war stories; they're about combat, yes, but they are also about what happens in between the scenes of violence, when the combat is over, and professional soldiers need to figure out what to do with themselves (one of the stories literally involves a group of soldiers trying to determine what they should do in the absence of orders from their superiors). With vividly drawn characters and a strong sense of the absurdity of war, this striking debut collection will evoke memories of Tim O'Brien's classic Vietnam stories, The Things They Carried (1990). O'Brien's observation that a true war story is never about war is echoed here again and again.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018

DEBUT Retired Navy SEAL Mackin knows whereof he writes in these 11 stories of actions and ops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and stateside. The central story, both physically (in the book) and emotionally, is "Great Circle Route Westward Through Perpetual Night," in which a soldier panics and shoots the cadre's ultra-efficient, beloved bomb-sniffing dog. The soldier is shipped out, disgraced; it is okay, it is said, to know and feel fear but not to act out of it, and he will always be known as a soldier who killed one of his own. Throughout, the reader gets a feel for the edginess and sometimes hallucinogenic nature of night patrols, for ops gone good and bad, and, specifically, how to get bombers sighted in on targets. The writing is straightforward, Hemingway-esque, and descriptive, and the violence is not steeped in gore. Mackin also has an eye for the absurd, the improbable, which readers will appreciate. As usual in collections like this, the quality is not uniform--"The Fire Truck" for example, seems basically pointless--but on balance Macklin has made a strong debut. VERDICT A well-plotted group of small fictions for readers wishing a feel for the reality of recent U.S. ground wars. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17.]--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2017

U.S. Navy veteran Mackin, who completed five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, gives us the first literary depiction of a SEAL Team at war. Two of the stories first appeared in The New Yorker, with one also showing up in Best American Short Stories 2014; the rest are original.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.