ELEVEN DAYS will be published by Hodder (Two Roads) in the UK and Knopf in the US in June 2013. 

ELEVEN DAYS begins in May 2011. Sara’s son Jason has been missing for nine days in the aftermath of a special operations forces mission. Out of devotion to him, Sara–smart, modest, tough-minded–has made herself knowledgeable about things military, and, as a freelance editor, she frequently works for Washington policy makers and wonks. But she knows nothing more about her son’s disappearance than the press corps camped out in her driveway. In a series of flashbacks we learn about Jason’s absentee father: a man who claimed to have been a writer but who died, according to “insiders,” helping to make the country safer. Through letters Jason wrote his mother while training, we see him becoming a strong, compassionate leader. But his fate will be determined by events that fall outside the sphere of his training, and far outside the strong embrace of his mother’s love.

The novel weaves together years of Jason’s training in special operations forces with agonising days in the life of Sara as she waits for news of him. The book considers a classic question : why do nations send sons to wars and how can mothers bear it? As well as a touching picture of the bond between a mother and a son this is a unique look into the training, history and culture of one of the world’s elite forces. Page-turning and haunting, this is an astonishing debut which questions the very nature of sacrifice and love…

What Denis Johnson did for the Vietnam War in Tree of Smoke, Lea Carpenter does for Iraq and Afghanistan in her superb Eleven Days. She drills deeply into the culture and lore of special operations warfare, and just as deeply into the minds of the people--the military-intellectual complex, if you will--who ultimately determine the American way of making war. But at the core of this extraordinary novel is the love of a mother for her child. That's the story of us all, and that's the story that may well break your heart. – Ben Fountain, Author & National Book Award Finalist

Lea Carpenter’s ELEVEN DAYS is an extraordinary accomplishment. Written with an elegant precision, this book is at its core a story about love: between a mother and a son, a son and a father, and a special group of men for each other and the imperfect country they choose to serve. I highly recommend it. — Kevin Powers, author of ‘The Yellow Birds’

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