For Your Tomorrow
The Way of an Unlikely Soldier
Published on 3. May 2011
272 pages
978-0-307-35980-3 (ISBN)
Description
The Year of Magical Thinking meets Fifteen Days in this literary exploration of one Canadian's decision to enlist and go to war.
What compels a young, affluent Canadian to put on a uniform and risk his life for the controversial mission in Afghanistan? And how does his family cope with his loss when he is killed there? Jeff Francis was a thirty-year-old doctoral candidate and student of Buddhism when he decided that joining the armed forces was the best way to make a difference in the world. In elegant, spare prose that captures both the hardness of war and the nuances of a grieving family, Melanie Murray - Captain Francis's aunt - uses the lens of his life and death to give Canada's war in Afghanistan the perceptive, literary treatment its soldiers, families and citizens deserve.
What compels a young, affluent Canadian to put on a uniform and risk his life for the controversial mission in Afghanistan? And how does his family cope with his loss when he is killed there? Jeff Francis was a thirty-year-old doctoral candidate and student of Buddhism when he decided that joining the armed forces was the best way to make a difference in the world. In elegant, spare prose that captures both the hardness of war and the nuances of a grieving family, Melanie Murray - Captain Francis's aunt - uses the lens of his life and death to give Canada's war in Afghanistan the perceptive, literary treatment its soldiers, families and citizens deserve.
More details
Person
Melanie Murray grew up in the military town of Oromocto, New Brunswick, during the 1960s while her father was a soldier at CFB Gagetown. She has been living in Kelowna, British Columbia, since 1987, teaching English at Okanagan College and raising her two sons, Damian and Gabriel. Captain Jeff Francis is her nephew.
