Outstanding. This poetry-verse-prose telling of a Canadian WWII vet trying to piece his life back together in New York and L.A. broke my heart in two. The language is so compelling that I felt like I was watching the story, not reading it. I could hear it and smell it and taste it by the end, so clearly are the characters drawn and the mid-20th-century cities recreated on these pages.

Walker is the vet trying to find his footing. As the buildings and neighborhoods of L.A. are dismantled and paved over into freeways, the blasts and wrecking balls retraumatize him, bringing him back to the battlefields in France. The text on the page is beautiful: clearly showing Walker's day-to-day existence in the city, his memories of Nova Scotia and war in italics, his own voice as he tries to piece himself back together in bold. I also listened to the audio recording of this book, masterfully narrated by Kerry Shale.