Synopses & Reviews
It's the rule — always watch your fives and twenty-fives. When a convoy halts to investigate a possible roadside bomb, stay in the vehicle and scan five meters in every direction. A bomb inside five meters cuts through the armor, killing everyone in the truck. Once clear, get out and sweep twenty-five meters. A bomb inside twenty-five meters kills the dismounted scouts investigating the road ahead.
Fives and twenty-fives mark the measure of a marines life in the road repair platoon. Dispatched to fill potholes on the highways of Iraq, the platoon works to assure safe passage for citizens and military personnel. Their mission lacks the glory of the infantry, but in a war where every pothole contains a hidden bomb, road repair brings its own danger.
Lieutenant Donavan leads the platoon, painfully aware of his shortcomings and isolated by his rank. Doc Pleasant, the medic, joined for opportunity, but finds his pride undone as he watches friends die. And there's Kateb, known to the Americans as Dodge, an Iraqi interpreter whose love of American culture — from hip-hop to the dog-eared copy of Huck Finn he carries — is matched only by his disdain for what Americans are doing to his country.
Returning home, they exchange one set of decisions and repercussions for another, struggling to find a place in a world that no longer knows them. A debut both transcendent and rooted in the flesh, Fives and Twenty-Fives is a deeply necessary novel.
Review
“Fives and Twenty-Fives is one of the great novels of war, the kind of book that comes along only once or twice each generation. It pulls off that rare literary feat of being at once expansive and personal; real and brutal and funny and wise. Michael Pitre, a two-tour Marine veteran of the Iraq conflict, is not just the real deal; he's a literary force in the making.” Joseph Boyden, author of Three Day Road
Review
"Talk about 'boots on the ground.' This debut novel is powerful, and gives us characters (and numbers) no reader will soon forget. Among the best novels to come out of the Iraq war, it gives a visceral and moving account of war and its aftermath." Robert Bausch, author of On the Way Home
Review
"Michael Pitre's Fives and Twenty-Fives is a remarkable literary debut, a hauntingly spare, tender, and unflinching account of those who go to war in our own time. This novel will be one of the cornerstones of the literature on war in the twenty-first century." Andrew Krivak, author of The Sojourn
Review
"An unblinking, razor-edged portrait of the war....[A] deeply moving book." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"A page turner that gives a ground view of the war in Iraq, chronicles the difficulties of veterans' re-entry into civilian society and explores the ingredients — good and bad — of leadership." Seattle Times
Review
"A thrilling, defining novel of the Iraq War." Booklist
Review
"[A] powerfully understated debut...in which everything rings so unshakably true. A war novel with a voice all its own, this will stand as one of the definitive renderings of the Iraq experience." Kirkus, starred review
Review
"The quiet pathos of war, its aftermath and the individuals affected by it, and the inability of a tone-deaf society to relate to them, is rendered with poignancy and stark honesty in Fives and Twenty-Fives. Readers will be floored by Pitre's spare literary style, the authenticity of each of his characters' three different voices, and those mesmerizing characters themselves, who are not perfect but demand our compassion for their very reality. The story of Fives and Twenty-Fives is sometimes difficult to abide, but is also necessary; we are lucky to have such a fine voice as Pitre's to tell it." Shelf Awareness
Synopsis
A heart-stopping debut novel about war and its aftermath by an Iraq War veteran — and an essential examination of the United States role in the world.
About the Author
Michael Pitre is a graduate of Louisiana State University, where he was a double major in history and creative writing. In 2002, he joined the Marines, deploying twice to Iraq and attaining the rank of Captain before leaving the service in 2010 to get his MBA at Loyola. He lives in New Orleans.