Dr. Kevin Patterson

Kevin Patterson, originally uploaded by johnwmacdonald.

Dr. Kevin Lee Patterson's and Jane Warren's book serves as another reminder that the Canadian public become more engaged with what the Canadian military is doing in Afghanistan - and also a call for the military to better connect with the Canadian public.

After hearing him read at length from one of the stories included in the book I feel that the grittly and poignant soldier's stories do help to build a bridge to understand our military involvement in Afghanistan.

From the Ottawa International Writers Festival online blurb:

OUTSIDE THE WIRE: THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
IN THE WORDS OF ITS PARTICIPANTS
With Kevin Patterson
$12 General Admission / $10 Students/Seniors
Free for Festival Members

A remarkable collection of first-hand accounts written by soldiers, doctors and aid workers on the front lines of Canada's war in Afghanistan.

Collected here are stories of battle and the more subtle engagements of this little-understood war: the tearful farewells; the shock of immersion into a culture that has been at war for thirty years; looking a suicide bomber in the eye the moment before he strikes; grappling with mortality in the Kandahar Field Hospital; and the unexpected humour that leavens life in a warzone.

Visceral, intimate and capitavating in ways no other telling could be, Outside the Wire features nearly two dozen stories by Canadians on the front lines in Afghanistan, including the previously unpublished letters home of Captain Nichola Goddard, the first female NATO soldier killed in combat.