Eleven Days

June 17, 2013
A woman falls into the national spotlight when her Navy SEAL son goes missing during a highly classified operation in Carpenter's debut novel. Sara, an art student who landed a secretarial job in D.C, and David, a mysterious government official 30 years her senior, find themselves expecting a child during a complex love affair. Sara elects to keep the babyânaming him Jasonâand becomes a single mother when David dies in the Middle East of undisclosed causes. She raises Jason with help from various "godparents", David's friends and coworkers who predispose the naturally brilliant child to the military at the youngest of ages. After the September 11th attacks, Jason's decides to attend the Naval Academy , marking the beginning of a sacrificial quest that, after nine years, he plans to end after one more missionâthe mission in which he disappears. The novel profiles the first eleven days of Sara's grief journey, and is filled with characters who exist on the edge of emotion. With poignant prose and an impeccably structured narrative, Carpenter's novel is the sweet pitch before the violin screeches; the concluding state of reverence for a world we can't control and a song for the war in Afghanistan that provides comfort without reason.

June 1, 2013
A mother considers the fate of her son, a Navy SEAL, with equal measures of intellect and heartbreak in this debut. Carpenter introduces Sara, the lead of this assured novel, in a state of high anxiety: Her son, Jason, has been missing after a mission went awry, and though his fellow soldiers and military brass are supportive, details are scarce. With too much time to think, she considers her affair with Jason's father, a high-ranking diplomat, and her son's unlikely transformation into a top-tier warrior. Carpenter alternates between Sara's perspective and Jason's, the latter allowing her to display the depth of her research into brutal special-ops training and the curious equipoise that great soldiers possess. Indeed, the novel contains a lengthy bibliography, underscoring the story's chief flaw: Its descriptions of life in the Special Forces at times obscure Jason's character. Yet Carpenter isn't piling on factoids a la Tom Clancy, and her prose throughout is elegant and considered. When Sara's wait for news ends, the story picks up more drama and tension, but the emotional temperature ticks up only a degree or two; this is ultimately a novel about how everyone, from soldiers to diplomats to parents, semisuccessfully attempts to keep their balance amid the wild inexplicability of war. In the process, Carpenter explores the mythmaking elements of warfare, from training folklore to the dissembling that authorities reflexively engage in. In that regard, the relative coolness is an odd but welcome shift in the war novel. Stripped of either satire or extreme violence, it lingers on the cold inevitabilities of conflict, which makes it a highly moral anti-war novel without noisily announcing itself as such. Though clinical at first glance, this well-turned story packs plenty of emotion. Among the smartest of the batch of recent American war novels.

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June 1, 2013
Tension builds in Carpenter's spare debut as single mother Sara awaits news of Jason, her Navy SEAL son, missing in action on a top-secret mission. Their story is reduced to very nearly its barest bones, told mainly via Jason's letters home and his and Sara's reminiscences. Carpenter succeeds in making Sara an Everymother as she tries to reckon how her bookish, poetry-loving son could choose a career path that puts him in mortal danger with every overseas tour. She eventually reasons that she had not lost a son on 9/11; she lost him later to something she could not provide at home. But it is clear that what she and Jason's deceased father each did give their sonwhose teammates nicknamed him Priestprepared him for nothing less than personal greatness, the kind of personal greatness that makes the best Navy SEAL. Subtle clues and a couple of plot twists sustain the story's tautness until its emotive climax.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2013

A founding editor of Zoetrope and a former deputy publisher of the Paris Review, Carpenter shows off her own writing with this debut about a woman whose son has gone missing after a SEAL mission.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2013

Debut novelist Carpenter, a founding editor of Zoetrope and a former deputy publisher of the Paris Review, tells the story of Sara, a devoted single mother whose son Jason has gone missing after a Navy SEAL operation in early May 2011. (Tellingly, though the raid occurred at that time, bin Laden's name is never mentioned in this suspenseful novel.) Jason's enigmatic father, a supposed Washington insider and older man, disappeared from the family years ago, and so Sara must cope alone. Through her recollections, Sara reveals how Jason chose and then qualified for the arduous path of special ops warfare. Not an exercise in simplistic flag-waving, Carpenter's engrossing, rather somber novel keenly examines an elite contemporary warrior class. VERDICT A powerful first novel and inside look into the making of a Navy SEAL and a portrait of the strength and courage of both mother and son. Highly recommended.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013

Debut novelist Carpenter, a founding editor of Zoetrope and a former deputy publisher of the Paris Review, tells the story of Sara, a devoted single mother whose son Jason has gone missing after a Navy SEAL operation in early May 2011. (Tellingly, though the raid occurred at that time, bin Laden's name is never mentioned in this suspenseful novel.) Jason's enigmatic father, a supposed Washington insider and older man, disappeared from the family years ago, and so Sara must cope alone. Through her recollections, Sara reveals how Jason chose and then qualified for the arduous path of special ops warfare. Not an exercise in simplistic flag-waving, Carpenter's engrossing, rather somber novel keenly examines an elite contemporary warrior class. VERDICT A powerful first novel and inside look into the making of a Navy SEAL and a portrait of the strength and courage of both mother and son. Highly recommended.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.