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Review of a Book Never Written

Terry Sanville

Aftermath by Erick Brandon, November 2023, Fiction, Bremington Publishing, 295 pages.


From the very beginning of Aftermath, Brandon propels us into the life of the book’s main character, Clark Emerson. He portrays Emerson as the quintessential Gen X misfit, a man walking Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, looking (but clearly not too closely) for life’s answers.


After a lacklustre college career, collecting a loving wife and kids along the way, Emerson somewhat blindly follows in his father’s footsteps and enlists in the Army. The story gains momentum when Lieutenant Emerson leads a platoon of infantrymen through the streets of Fallujah in 2004. IEDs detonate around them, booby-trapped buildings explode, insurgents fight from house to house, snipers take their toll, and bodies lie in the streets like crumpled sacks of laundry. Some of them are women and children. The platoon does not escape unscathed: two die from headshots and two more in rough condition are medevaced to the nearest field hospital.


Lt. Emerson lives to fight throughout the six-week siege, with new replacements coming and going as combat drags on. We readers begin to think that this book is yet another tell-all about the hell of war and the insanity it presents. The level of detail Brandon provides is excruciating, leaving us to wonder if this story is really autobiographical. But if we stare at the book’s title for a minute, our mindset, just like Aftermath’s storyline, shifts.


Without warning, Brandon takes us deep into the conifer forests of the Sierra Nevada, east of the California town of Visalia. We find Emerson living in a cold and leaky cabin in the woods with his wife and two small children. The symptoms of his PTSD, some of them violent, dominate their daily lives, not helped by the family’s isolation and the lack of basic services and utilities. So far, the book has followed tropes that have been around since Tolstoy. War is hell – what else is new? Yet, we keep engaging in war. As a nation, we must like hell.


Living in the mountains, especially during harsh winters, becomes a daily struggle and Aftermath twists into a tale of survival, with the family battling Mother Nature, another war without clear objectives with all of its attendant mission drift. His wife takes a maintenance job with a town’s school district forty miles away. Their son and daughter attend classes, the mother and kids commute daily on the school bus that picks up children from outlying ranches. They become known as the crazies living in the woods but are generally treated with kindness by the locals – except by law enforcement and social service officials who are concerned about the family’s health and welfare.


Slowly, the story moves into its third phase. In fact, Aftermath feels very much like a classical three-act play. In act three, Emerson sinks into a mental fog, where all that is left are the questions. Was killing insurgents and innocent civilians murder? Is killing during war tantamount to government-sanctioned homicide? Does war override the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill?” And what about “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” (Romans 12:19-21). Is God always on our side? If so, what about the wars we’ve lost? Did God desert us? Maybe he was never there. Maybe he is nowhere.


For this reviewer, it is this last act that is most prescient and valuable. But make no mistake, Aftermath is no cerebral treatise on the ethics of war. Brandon skillfully integrates action-filled combat scenes, the family’s struggle to stay alive in the wilderness, and the succinct exploration of the moral basis for killing people. Some might shy away from this last theme. But ever since Vietnam it is exactly what we should consider.


I was especially impressed by the novel’s conclusion. Brandon creates an ending that not even this seasoned reviewer could predict. So what Greek mask is it: the smiling Thalia or the frowning Melpomene? Maybe neither? While all loose ends are not tied, I felt fully satisfied, and so should most readers.


I recommend Aftermath as entertaining, educational, thought-provoking and worthy of our time and attention.



Reviewed by:



Allen Fenderling, 1st Lt. U.S. Army (ret)

P.O. Box 4564

Visalia, California 93292

AUTHOR BIO

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). His stories have been accepted more than 550 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The American Writers Review,Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated four times for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

JUDGE'S REMARKS

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FLASH FICTION JUDGE

Amy Debellis 

Amy DeBellis is a multi-genre writer and the author of the novel All Our Tomorrows (CLASH Books, 2025).

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