Soldiers go AWOL to honor fallen brother

In the deluge of Iraq Warthemed books that appeared in 2012, David Abrams’ “Fobbit” was known as the funny one. Drawn from his experience as an Army public affairs officer, it tells the story of the “marshmallow” soldiers confined to base, writing news releases about a war they never see.

His new novel, which is only rarely funny, is plenty earnest and affecting. Set at the height of the Iraq War, “Brave Deeds” is the story of six soldiers sneaking across the suburbs of Baghdad to attend the memorial service of their beloved platoon sergeant, Rafe Morgan, who was blown to pieces by a car bomb. Assigned to quick reaction force (QRF) duty during the ceremony, they go AWOL instead and steal a Humvee to drive across town to the base where the service will be held.

The war is just happening to these young men, who serve on the lowest rung in the Army hierarchy, and, as implausible as it might be, this quest is their chance to regain some agency.

The whole novel is written in this collective first-personal plural. The six members of the unit are all screw-ups in their own way but together, they add up to more than the sum of their parts.

“Brave Deeds” takes place on a single afternoon, a five-hour sprint across enemy territory, though with regular and often momentum-sapping flashbacks to flesh out each squad member’s backstory. Abrams creates dramatic tension by stripping the squad of their vehicle, medic, radio and map in the first chapter.

The soldiers are foulmouthed, sex-obsessed and fiercely loyal for reasons they can’t quite articulate — in other words, packed with young American male authenticity. Abrams’ prose is relaxed and conversational, with a few scattered literary nuggets that add heft.

In the climactic final scene, though, Abrams attempts to braid thematic strands of death and rebirth and religious communion, never quite attaining the emotional heights to which he aspires. But the central irony — that this funeral is more important to them than any mission their squad has undertaken — remains front and center. In the Iraq War, we veterans eventually realized that they were killing us mostly because we were killing them, and the reverse as well. It’s a cycle cruelly laid bare in “Brave Deeds,” where Abrams reminds us that death always begets more death.