Dust to Dust - by Benjamin Busch (Paperback)

About the Book

Tim O'Brien meets Annie Dillard in this remarkable memoir by debut author Benjamin Busch. Much more than a war memoir, Dust to Dust brilliantly explores the passage through a lifetime--a moving meditation on life and death, the adventures of childhood and revelations of adulthood. Seemingly ordinary things take on a breathtaking radiance when examined by this decorated Marine officer--veteran of two combat tours in Iraq--actor on the hit HBO series The Wire, and son of acclaimed novelist Frederick Busch. Above all, Benjamin Busch is a truly extraordinary new literary talent as evidenced by his exemplary debut, Dust to Dust--an original, emotionally powerful, and surprisingly refreshing take on an American soldier's story.

Book Synopsis

Tim O'Brien meets Annie Dillard in this remarkable memoir by debut author Benjamin Busch. Much more than a war memoir, Dust to Dust brilliantly explores the passage through a lifetime--a moving meditation on life and death, the adventures of childhood and revelations of adulthood. Seemingly ordinary things take on a breathtaking radiance when examined by this decorated Marine officer--veteran of two combat tours in Iraq--actor on the hit HBO series The Wire, and son of acclaimed novelist Frederick Busch. Above all, Benjamin Busch is a truly extraordinary new literary talent as evidenced by his exemplary debut, Dust to Dust--an original, emotionally powerful, and surprisingly refreshing take on an American soldier's story.

From the Back Cover

Dust to Dust is an extraordinary memoir about life and landscape, mortality and memory, the farm and the battlefield, the adventures of childhood and the revelations of adulthood. Writing with enormous poignancy, Benjamin Busch, a decorated U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer and the son of celebrated novelist Frederick Busch, has crafted a lasting book about our place in time to stand with the finest work of Tim O'Brien or Annie Dillard.

From his pastoral childhood in rural New York to Marine training in North Carolina, Ukraine, and California; from a boyhood of fort building and exploration to deployment during the worst of the war in Iraq, in Dust to Dust Busch offers much more than a war memoir. Here is an unforgettable meditation on life and loss, the longing for the elemental and the call of the wild, and how the curious children we were remain alive in us all.

Review Quotes

"Beautifully told. . . . There is not one bad sentence in this book. . . . I cannot wait to see what [Busch] writes next." - Library Journal (starred review)
"An imaginative, original meditation on mortality that reaches beyond the particulars of the Iraq war and the present day to grasp the universal. It is a literary gem." - Philip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War
"[Busch] writes with the precision of a stonemason, the courage of a combat veteran, and the inquisitiveness of an artist. . . . A haunting meditation on time, memory, and death." - Baltimore City Paper
"Dust to Dust is startlingly good." - The SunBreak
"Essential Iraq War reading. . . . The conflict between Busch's pacifist upbringing and his evolution into a decorated Marine rests at the heart of this fine memoir." - Men's Journal
"Beautifully written. . . . Captivating. . . . It's fascinating to journey through [these] literary landscapes as time passes, swirls back, and eddies like a stream before flowing away." - Seattle Times
"Intriguing. . . . A worthwhile read." - Buffalo News
"A meditation on the literal and figurative borders of life--country to country, river to lake, soil to dust, wood to ash, life to death, blood to bones, child to man--[that] explores the wonders of the natural world and our solitary lives within it." - Hour Detroit magazine
"Dust to Dust is not a typical contemporary war memoir. . . . It partakes of the pastoral strain associated with World War I trench-poets like Edmund Blunden and Edward Thomas. . . . War's distillation of violence and tragedy . . . offers a more intensified version of the ruin Busch already feels all around him. This sensibility finds its perfect home in the Michigan farmland he buys, its earth roiling with poison." - New York Times Book Review
"Dust to Dust is not a typical contemporary war memoir. . . . It partakes of the pastoral strain associated with World War I trench-poets like Edmund Blunden and Edward Thomas." - New York Times Book Review
"Actor/writer Busch--son of writer Frederick Busch--proves his own literary talents by delving deep into the memories of his coming-of-age amid war and literature. . . . Poignant. . . . Entertaining. . . . The author's ability to reveal beauty in the mundane--the dismantling of a sandbox, the drilling of an ice-fishing hole, the burial of a goat--does much to entice readers." - Kirkus Reviews
"Dust to Dust is startlingly good." - The SunBreak
"Busch writes with eloquence about his tours of combat in Iraq, and seamlessly blends the human and natural characteristics of war." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"An invigorating and moving take on the war memoir." - Wisconsin State Journal
"A beautiful meditation on war, loss, and the larger questions of life and death." - Huffington Post
"A remarkable book--part military memoir, part childhood reminiscence. . . . Busch is filled with complicated and fascinating contradictions." - Salon.com
"Stunning. . . . Remarkable." - The Milwaukee Express
"A beautiful and powerful meditation on combat, profound loss, and mortality." - Newark Star Ledger
"[Busch's] portrayal of the war in Iraq is unsentimental and immediate." - New Yorker
"[A] must-read memoir." - Details
"Busch carries us on a haunting, humorous, and poignant journey." - Publishers Weekly
"Revealing. . . . There's plenty to engage the reader here. . . . Busch has rendered a tender memoir that pays tribute to the child who lives within each of us." - Booklist
"Busch is a poet with the soul of a civil engineer, and for as long as his body sustains him, he is the perfect soldier. I loved every page of this mesmerizing book." - Bonnie Jo Campbell, bestselling author of Once Upon a River
"Extraordinary. . . . It is impossible to read any part of this work and not be moved. . . . [Dust to Dust] is one to be savored. Don't fail to read it." - New York Journal of Books
"Every religious practice I know contains a facet in which knowledge of your own mortality draws you closer to the ultimate truth. Now this brave soldier with his singular sensibility renders for us a life borne of that wisdom. Benjamin Busch was molded into one of Camus's perfect men: alert in the instant with a clear-eyed view of contingency and reflexes to act. In Dust to Dust, he builds us a fort we're loath to leave." - Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club, Cherry, and Lit
"This brave soldier with his singular sensibility . . . builds us a fort we're loath to leave." - Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club, Cherry, and Lit
"Elegiac, funny, wistful, deep, and wonderfully human, Dust to Dust moved me to laughter and tears, sometimes simultaneously. . . . After reading this book, you will want to go outside and really look at our world." - Karl Marlantes, bestselling author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War
"Dust to Dust is a wonderful book, original in concept and stunningly written, a soldier's memoir that is about soldiering and much else besides. The last two dozen pages are a tour de force, a breathtaking meditation on loss and remembrance, dust to dust." - Ward Just
"Busch is a brilliant prose stylist for whom every pause counts, a man of three worlds--the heart, the mind, the earth. Dust to Dust is a stunning literary work about this mysterious trinity, and a return to home." - Doug Stanton, bestselling author of Horse Soldiers and In Harm's Way