Author's Note
I don’t think I suffer from PTSD. I definitely experienced traumas during my five-year service in Shayetet 13, the Israeli Navy SEALs, but these traumas—which mirror the journey of Yoav, the protagonist in this novel—didn’t evolve into post-traumas. I believe that’s because I write. I’ve been writing about the military experience for the past twenty years—mostly in screenplays, essays, and short stories, now in this novel that took more than a decade to complete. I often wonder how these traumas would have manifested had I not had writing as an outlet. Maybe writing about the military for twenty years is the post-trauma. Or, more accurately, a form of processing trauma. Perhaps writing saved my life; there’s no way to know for sure. But therein lies the power of writing, and why I love it so much.
My writing teacher, Charles Bock, said, “On the one hand, you have words on a page, nothing more. On the other hand, you have what it means to be alive, nothing less. Our sky consists of 26 letters, and when arranged correctly, they can convey all that can be thought and said. As for what can’t be said, writing brings us right to that line.” He also advised me, “Write what you know—but make sure nobody else knows it.”
I hesitate to label this book as strictly autobiographical, as that would be misleading. But dismissing it as pure fiction would be equally inaccurate. Ultimately, this world is one I know deeply because I lived it—and continued to live it long after my service ended.
Almost everything in this novel is rooted in reality. Every mission described in these pages really happened, and every soldier characterized in the novel is someone I know, to varying degrees. Some events happened to me, some to people I know, some to people I don’t, and, yes, some are purely made up. After more than a decade of writing and rewriting, I sometimes struggle to distinguish between what truly happened and what has been shaped by memory and imagination. There are moments I’m 90% certain happened to me, yet there’s a lingering 10% that wonders if I only feel like they happened. Ultimately, that uncertainty doesn’t matter because that feeling is what counts. The emotional truth. I have felt every single word and sentence in this book. As Tim O’Brien observes in The Things They Carried, the feeling of what happened can sometimes be more true than what actually happened.
As I write this note on October 7, 2024—exactly a year after Black Saturday, the most horrific attack on Jews since the Holocaust—we are a year into this war with no clear end in sight. This book seems to address a simpler time, though it did not feel simple at the time. During my service in the early 2000s, I disconnected myself from politics, government, and leadership. They had nothing to do with the task at hand. Today, I don’t see how that separation is possible. Maybe you have to be in your late teens or early twenties. Maybe you need to have stayed in the system, or hold the beliefs of that system and its government. None of that applies to me anymore.
This novel aims to be free of that political noise. Yoav, a character loosely based on me, embodies my journey of growing up, falling in love with my country, and striving to serve it. He grapples with relationships shaped by the demands of war and military life. Like me, Yoav’s motivations are not political; he simply wants to do right by his country, his parents, his teammates, his friends, and the women who love him. He wants to do well and not disappoint those who care about him. Perhaps his greatest fear is that he’ll fail—a feeling that loomed over me in the lead-up to my enlistment, during my training, and even throughout my service. It’s a terrible thing to be afraid, and it has taken me a long time to overcome that fear.
My hope is that I’ve captured this time truthfully and represented my experiences and those of others accurately. I remain optimistic that the country and people I bled and fought for will prevail, that the hostages will safely return, that my government will make selfless decisions for our children’s future, and that my fellow citizens will vote wisely. The world continues to spin. Life, as my father says, is a spoke on a constantly turning wheel, and the most important thing always is to hang on and not let go.