Editorial Note
Shoebox War is a fictionalized story built from a very real place: the things we carry forward from the past, sometimes literally.
At first glance, it is a Cold War military story set in Africa in 1985. But underneath that, it is also a coming-of-age story, a love story, and a story about memory. Africa is not merely the backdrop. It becomes part of the force that shapes the people inside the book.
The story is told with the advantage, and burden, of hindsight. Forty years later, choices look different. Small moments take on more weight. People who once seemed temporary become permanent.
I wrote the book partly so my children and grandchildren could understand the life that existed before the version of me they knew. Much of that history had remained packed away in an old shoebox, along with maps, photographs, currency, and other objects that still carried entire chapters with them.
The book also looks at a remarkable period when a handful of men, working far from public view, could become part of events much larger than themselves.
And then there is the question readers always ask:
What is true? What is invented? What really happened?
I am not going to tell you.
You get to decide.
