I first heard about this book a couple years ago on the Today show. At first it was hard to take a Today show book club selection seriously, but then I decided to listen to what the star author had to say about the book. Isabel Allende introduced Three Day Road, and her enthusiasm for the story really intrigued me. She writes in a completely different genre (magical realism) from what she decribed this book to be (WWI historical fiction), so I thought I should give it a shot. And I decided to wait until it came out on paperback, and boy do I wish I had read this earlier. What an amazing story!! It's one of those books I could hardly wait to get into bed to read each night.

For a debut author, Joseph Boyden is an incredible story teller. He manages to weave several stories into one, paralleling them at the right moments so it amazingly doesn't seem forced or unfocused. I know just enough about Indian story telling to feel that Boyden honestly captures Amerindian culture and thought, and he also captures the horror and honesty of war, including drug addiction, trench warfare, the cruelty of seasons, and the level of spirituality those can receive and achieve from suffering in such horrid conditions in a way few writers can.