Summary

The novel opens with Eden in a burn center in San Antonio. He has dropped from his weight of 220 to a mere 70 pounds. He has been at the burn center for three years, ever since the Humvee hit a pressure plate while travelling through the Hamrin Valley, killing everyone else and leaving him barely surviving. The novel is told by one of his buddies, now dead, and witnessing the trials of Eden’s recovery, from “that other side” (3).

The narrator met Eden in the armed forces and trained with him, even in a survival school before being deployed a second time. He described that school as preparing you for what happens if you become a prisoner, then notes with irony that those same instructors prepared a graduation ceremony for them. Eden was a daredevil, earning his nickname BASE Jump by leaping from the...