Structure

The Men We Reaped consists of a prologue and 11 chapters. Six of the chapters tell Ward’s story while the other five tell the stories of five young men who have died. Each chapter is titled rather than numbered. The chapters about the young men are simply titled with their names. The chapters about Ward’s life each begin with the word “we.” The “we” refers to herself and Joshua as she later explains that her story is inextricable from Joshua’s story.

The timeline of the book moves simultaneously forward through time and backward through time. The chapters in which Ward tells her own story move forward from before her birth to the present day. The chapters about the young men move backward in time, starting with the last man to die and moving back in time to the first man to die. The purpose of...