The deserter's tale

About this book

In the first memoir from a young soldier who deserted from the war in Iraq, Joshua Key offers a vivid and damning indictment of what we are doing there. Key, a young husband and father from a conservative background, enlisted in 2002 to lift his family out of poverty. A year later, he found himself participating in a war that was not the campaign against evildoers he had expected. He saw Iraqi civilians beaten, shot, and killed for little or no provocation. He participated in raids that found only terrified families and no evidence of terrorist activity. On leave, Key knew he could not return, so he took his family to seek asylum in Canada. His book tells how a patriotic man went to war, believing in his government's commitment to integrity and justice, and was transformed by what he saw in Iraq.--From publisher description.