LONG LONG WAY,A - Penguin USA

In 1914, eighteen-year-old Willie Dunne leaves behind Dublin and everyone he loves in order to enlist in the Allied forces on the Western Front. Once there he encounters violence on a scale he could not have imagined, barely sustaining his spirit with letters from home and the camaraderie of the boys who fight and die by his side. But when he returns home on leave to encounter the growing tensions over Irish independence, Willie soon finds himself confronting unbearable choices regarding family, patriotism, and duty. A lyrical and poignant portrayal of wartime tragedy, this is a work of rare power from one of the English language's great prose masters.