The Way to Valhalla

Skillful use of imagery combined with a barrage of raw emotion set the course for this novel about the effects of violence on a young man's life. Haunted by his brutal upbringing and hardened by working-class deprivation, young Jimmy Curtis decided long ago that becoming a soldier was his best chance to escape from the mean streets of southern Ireland. Now training to become a paratrooper, he is confident of his skills and relieved to be in a new environment; but as he starts to ship out to hot spots around the world, he is thrown into another kind of violence, sponsored by nations but lethal all the same. Following stints patrolling the streets of Northern Ireland and intervening in mercenary warfare in Africa, Jimmy finds himself on the front lines in the Falklands War, face-to-face with the terrifying power of modern technical weapons as he battles at close quarters. In the aftermath, shaken by his experiences, Jimmy returns to his boyhood neighborhood in Ireland only to be dragged back into the soulless anarchy he had thought was in the past.