Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country

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The other quibble I have is that any Iraqi point of view whatever is very much missing from Power's account. He has an Iraqi interpreter character, and speaks of buying food in local markets, but doesn't use those opportunities to give an insight into what it may have been like for the locals. I have no doubt this book was received well. It probably should be. It just was difficult for me for all that I shared. CRANE MURDOCH: At this point in our relationship we still talk, all of the time. It’s not so much a journalist relationship as I’m the person with whom she’s willing to share almost anything. And she also knows quite a bit about my life. I think it’s her deep well of empathy and her ability to feel empathy for literally anyone in the world. That has been the most important lesson for me.

When the mortars fell, the leaves and fruit and birds were frayed like ends of rope. They lay on the ground in scattered piles, torn feathers and leaves and the rinds of broken fruit intermingling. The sunlight fell absently through the spaces in the treetops, here and there glistening as if on water from smudges of bird blood and citrus." A murder on an Indian reservation changes lives—at least one for the better but most for the worse. I also felt that as a member of the tribe, she also had a particular, interesting perspective on the boom because she was someone who had left the reservation. She lived off the reservation for a lot of her life, then she had gone to prison when the oil boom was beginning. When she got out of prison, the reservation had been leased to oil companies, and the boom had already begun. She was coming home and she was seeing it with fresh eyes. So she had that really interesting position in this story as someone who was both an insider, and an outsider. And that gave her a perspective on this crime and this oil boom that I felt like no one else I met had. The war tried to kill us in the spring," begins this breathtaking account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. Much of the novel focuses on Bartle's promise to the mother of Murph, a fellow private, to not let him die in the war. Bartle and Murph also make a pact not to be the 1,000th casualty in the war. The reader learns in the beginning of the novel, however, that Murph dies in the war.The first lines of Kevin Powers The Yellow Birds announces that it intends to be a classic war novel, to be placed on the shelf somewhere between All Quiet on the Western Front and The Things They Carried: Probabilmente di trovare il capolavoro così tanto reclamizzato, dai connazionali di Powers, e da recensori e commentatori nostrani. The most pertinent and obvious thing to say about The Yellow Birds is that it is about the Iraq War, written by a veteran who served as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. This is worth mentioning because that war is still a recent and polarizing event. Have an opinion, and you are likely to get a disproportionate response. At the very least, The Yellow Birds is interesting because it is on the vanguard of our literary grappling with the war. There are still novels published making sense of Vietnam; if that serves as any indication, there are countless permutations of the Iraq War-novel ahead of us.

Heritage Themes of the Northern Plains: Book Discussions in the Northern Plains National Heritage AreaIt seems disrespectful to report that "I really liked" this book with a four star rating. I did not like the subject matter. War is a terrible thing and I have been fortunate by God's providence not to have ever had to witness a minute of such terror myself. That is why I know it is good for me and others like me to read books like this; "The Things We Carried", for example.