After a tour in Afghanistan and a brutal wound, Larry Chandler was done. Then came the 2007 troop surge and a redeployment to Iraq. With only five weeks left in their tour, Chandler and the men he leads are assigned a dangerous mission. While his men crave action, Chandler just hopes they’ll all make it home alive.

Inspired by his deployments, Adam Kovac’s debut novel reveals the complexity of modern miliatry service, the struggle of our soldiers to connect, and the cost of achieving military objectives that, while they might be good for politics, are paid for with human lives.

---

“Ever since the United States has been throwing our men and women into combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, novelists have been trying to come to grips artistically with these so-called ‘forever wars.’ Onto this already-crowded shelf of war literature comes one of the best of the bunch: Adam Kovac’s The Surge. It perfectly captures the combat experience—long periods of boredom punctuated by sudden bursts of violence—in prose that never lets up in intensity.”
—David Abrams, author of Brave Deeds and Fobbit

“It is hard to imagine a soldier protagonist more apt for our time than Larry Chandler: physically and emotionally wounded, disillusioned, popping pain pills, and trying to keep raw recruits eager to prove themselves from knowing what he knows of war. In this remarkable debut, Adam Kovac has not only produced a vivid and compelling story about the reality of war, he’s somehow conjured an allegory for where we are in American history.”
—Naeem Murr, author of The Perfect Man

“Adam Kovac has written in The Surge a novel rare in its insight and power. There is no trumpeting of conflict or sacrifice here, no outlandish satire. Instead, Kovac faces the boredom and horror, the drudgery of a forever war, with a steady hand and gaze. Readers will come away from this book shaken, mad, stunned.”
—Eric Shonkwiler, author of Above All Men and Moon Up, Past Full