October 1973: A young physician in Israel prepares to celebrate the Jewish
High Holidays with his wife and children. Suddenly a military invasion changes
his life forever. This book chronicles the author's transformation from a
civilian to a wartime doctor. In vivid personal details, the author Itzhak
Brook, a veteran of both the Israeli Defense Forces and the United States Navy,
recounts his first experience in war. He describes his own doubt and misgivings
of being a physician facing the daily struggle of survival in the Sinai battle
zone. Expecting to heal his soldiers' physical combat wounds, Brook unexpectedly
must address his soldiers psychological battlefield trauma. In unvarnished
details from the mundane to the catastrophic, he describes his perspective of a
war that shaped his own life, and his nation's fragile
identity.
