COPYRIGHT

      Fourth Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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      Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

      FIRST EDITION

      Copyright © The Ontario Review 2014

      Joyce Carol Oates asserts the moral right to

      be identified as the author of this work

      Cover design by Allison Saltzman

      Cover photograph © Denis Jr. Tangney/Getty images

      A catalogue record for this book is

      available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

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      Source ISBN: 9780007485741

      Ebook Edition © January 2014 ISBN: 9780007485765

      Version 2014-11-18

DEDICATION

      To Charlie Gross

      my husband and first reader

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      A shortened version of chapter two appeared in Fighting Words, edited by Roddy Doyle, 2011.

      Thanks to former Marine Mariette Kalinowski, Sergeant, USMC (ret.), and to Martin Quinn for reading this manuscript with special care as Hertog Research Fellows at Hunter College, and thanks to Greg Johnson for his continued friendship, sharp eye and ear, and impeccable literary judgment.

EPIGRAPH

      “Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men, ‘I am a murderer!’ Then God will send you life again.”

      —SONIA TO RASKOLNIKOV, IN CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

      I don’t feel young now. I think I am old in my heart.

      —AMERICAN IRAQ WAR VETERAN, 2005

      CONTENTS

       Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Prologue

Part I: Lost Girl

One - The Search

Two - Bride-to-Be

Three - The Father

Four - Descending and Ascending

Five

       Six - The Corporal in the Land of the Dead

       Seven - The Corporal’s Confession

       Eight - The Corporal’s Letter

       Part II: Exile

       Nine - Execution Chamber

       Ten - The Betrayal

       Eleven - The Rescue

       Twelve - The Guilty One

       Part III: The Return

       Thirteen - The Long Wall

       Fourteen - The Church of the Good Thief

       Fifteen - The Father

       Sixteen - The Mother

       Seventeen - The Sister

       Epilogue

       About the Author

       Novels by Joyce Carol Oates

       Credits

      About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

       July 2005

      DIDN’T LOVE ME ENOUGH.

      Why I vanished. Nineteen years old. Tossed my life like dice!

      In