Eleven Days

Lea Carpenter Press Reviews

'A deeply affecting story about a mother and a son that attests to the debut of an extraordinarily gifted writer... Ms. Carpenter makes palpable the immensely complicated emotional arithmetic that binds this mother and son - Sara's cherishing of her only son and her knowledge that she needs to let him find his own way in life; Jason's worries about his mother's worries, clashing up against his passionate embrace of a dangerous profession. In doing so Ms. Carpenter has written a novel that maps - much the way that Jayne Anne Phillips's classic 'Machine Dreams and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country did - the fallout that war has not just on soldiers, who put their lives on the line, but also on their families, who wait anxiously back home.' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

'A compelling story made memorable by the strength of its elegant prose.' Toni Morrison

'Lea Carpenter's ELEVEN DAYS is an extraordinary accomplishment. Written with an elegant precision, this book is at its core a story about love: between a mother and a son, a son and a father, and a special group of men for each other and the imperfect country they choose to serve. I highly recommend it.' Kevin Powers, bestselling author of THE YELLOW BIRDS

'What Denis Johnson did for the Vietnam War in TREE OF SMOKE, Lea Carpenter does for Iraq and Afghanistan in her superb ELEVEN DAYS. At the core of this extraordinary novel is the love of a mother for her child. That's the story of us all, and that's the story that may well break your heart.' Ben Fountain, author of BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK

'[An] earnest first novel ... Carpenter provides a convincing portrait of an exclusive and exclusively male military subculture, and of the men formed and deformed by it.' The New York Times