Purple Heart

"Matt saw a little Iraqi boy standing at the end of an alley.

The alley was littered with debris. There was an overturned car in the middle of the street, a candy wrapper fluttering from a coil of razor wire, a stray dog nosing though a pile of trash. From far away, the high-pitched wail of the muezzin pierced the air, calling the faithful to prayers. There was a sudden, silent flash of light and the boy was lifted off his feet. He was smiling, smiling and slowly paddling his arms like a swimmer. Then he seemed to float, high up into the crayon-blue sky, until all Matt could see were the soles of his shoes as he disappeared, far above the burning city."

At the opening of the novel, Matt experiences a flashback of what happened just before he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Matt will replay these memories throughout the novel, trying to determine exactly what took place, and the author includes juxtaposed images to illustrate life in Iraq: a candy wrapper and razor wire; a stray cat immune to the battle going on around him; the sound of a prayer call amid a scene of violence. To Matt, the most striking is the image of a “smiling” boy, floating into a “crayon-blue sky”—an image that carries an ominous hint of danger, as the boy disappears above a “burning city.”

“'Here in Iraq, the things you see, sometimes you wonder about God,' Father Brennan said. He put his cap back on his head and walked toward the next bed. 'But there’s always baseball.'”

Early on in the novel, the author indicates that even for a priest, the violence of Iraq makes him “wonder about God.”The world of the novel is not one where religion will supply easy answers. Father Brennan chooses to find support not from religion, but from baseball, the traditional American pastime. Throughout the novel, baseball reappears as a reminder of an idealized American life, far from the wartime reality of the characters.