This is an absorbing, fast, entertaining read featuring a great story, great characters, great details (one character "almost lost a toe, cutting it on a Pringles can during a water fight"). I loved the one-liners. "He used to work for a catering company, and the reigning wisdom was, a third more food for a Jewish event, a third less drink." Wesleyan is a college "where the students idea of exercise was to walk to the store to buy cigarettes."

Though the context is a family that lost a member in the Iraq War, the book did not strike me as heavy-handedly political; the book probably would have worked almost as well if the character had died of cancer and the grieving mother had become an anti-smoking activist instead of an antiwar activist. It struck me as more a book about family and relationships and mourning than about war.

The book is about the aftermath of a death, so it has a certain sadness about it, though not oppressively so. It winds up on a fairly upbeat note (I think I can say that without spoiling the story).

The author is a friend of mine.