Publisher's Synopsis
I knew very early that I was a solitary being. I longed for the elemental. As a child I was drawn to wilderness and the ruins left vacant by human decline, neglect, and tragedy. . . - - Dust to Dust is an extraordinary memoir about ordinary things: life and death, war and peace, the explorations of childhood and revelations of adulthood. Benjamin Busch-a U.S. Marine who served two combat tours in Iraq, actor on The Wire, and son of celebrated novelist Frederick Busch-has crafted his own The Things They Carried for our time. - - In chapters themed around the elemental-water, metal, bone, blood-Dust to Dust moves across time from Busch's rural childhood in central New York, to Marine training in North Carolina and California, to the worst of the war in Iraq. Busch writes with great poignancy about a boyhood spent melting down crayons into pretend bullets, sinking his own toy battleships, and playing soldier in the woods. A book full of tree-houses, snow-forts, high-school football, Marine hijinks, fathers and sons, moments of danger and death, real and imagined, Dust to Dust is an unforgettable meditation on life, death, and how the child we were remains alive in us all. -
