Overview
Operating Base Cornucopia: A three hundred-year-old fortress in the remote Iraqi desert where a few dozen soldiers wait for their next assignment; among them, Private Toby Durrant, a self-described “broke nobody.” Then a deadly ambush touches off events that put Durrant in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. Insurgents massing in the nearby hills, a secretive member of military intelligence, an abandoned toy factory, and a mysterious, half-feral child—Durrant must figure out the links between them if he’s to survive. A classic story of a decent man trying to do right under impossible circumstances, this blistering look at military life in “the sandbox” of Iraq marks the debut of a major new talent.
Synopsis
In Iraq, a roadside ambush puts a young American soldier onto a high-reaching conspiracy.
The New York Times - Joel Turnipseed
…Zimmerman has more in mind than merely getting a hard-luck soldier into trouble. The Sandbox is loaded with an M.R.E. caseful of plot elements, all pulled from Iraq war headlines—lost billions in cash, prisoner interrogations, soldier indiscretions, failed counterinsurgency plans—and all play their part in bringing Toby's story to its terrible conclusion. That every question in this novel interrogates every other is one of its great strengths and will keep you turning the pages of its short chapters, as each weaves the insistent first-person mystery of "Why me?" with the larger mystery of "What are we doing here?"
Editorials
Joel Turnipseed
…Zimmerman has more in mind than merely getting a hard-luck soldier into trouble. The Sandbox is loaded with an M.R.E. caseful of plot elements, all pulled from Iraq war headlines—lost billions in cash, prisoner interrogations, soldier indiscretions, failed counterinsurgency plans—and all play their part in bringing Toby's story to its terrible conclusion. That every question in this novel interrogates every other is one of its great strengths and will keep you turning the pages of its short chapters, as each weaves the insistent first-person mystery of "Why me?" with the larger mystery of "What are we doing here?"—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Zimmerman’s remarkable debut succeeds both as a realistic portrayal of the current Iraq war from the American perspective and as an energetic thriller. Stationed at a remote and poorly equipped U.S. army base in the Iraqi desert, Pvt. Toby Durrant worries about his pregnant fiancée back home. After a remotely detonated bomb kills two soldiers, Toby’s commander, Lieutenant Blankenship, recruits him to monitor the accuracy of a translator, and then to interrogate two Iraqi prisoners suspected of being involved in the attack. Well aware of his lack of qualifications, Toby, who made a number of bad choices as a civilian, can’t help thinking something else is going on, especially after the prisoners turn up dead. His difficulties escalate with the arrival of a military intelligence officer, who asks him for information about Blankenship. Readers will empathize with the author’s everyman narrator as Toby tries to survive while maintaining his humanity. Zimmerman is a talent to watch. (Apr.)From the Publisher
“[A] gripping first novel.”—The New York Times Book Review
“[A] remarkable debut.... Zimmerman is a talent to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
“Zimmerman adroitly depicts [Iraq’s] isolated moonscape—a place as liable to produce hallucinations and heat exhaustion as it is to churn up sandstorms that last for days.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The Sandbox sabotaged me. I read the first four pages and my sleeve got caught in the lives of these soldiers, and the story was gritty and real and offhand, and so I lost the day and the next, and I’m so happy to report back that this terrific novel offers us both the world of the conflict and another story just as powerful. Zimmerman’s made a fine book.”—Ron Carlson, author of The Signal