Join local author and Army veteran Adrian Bonenberger in conversation with author Matt Gallagher. They’ll be discussing Matt’s new novel, Daybreak, inspired by a trip they took to Ukraine to train Ukrainian citizens in March of 2022.
Registration is required to attend this IN PERSON event.
About the Book
Thirty-three-year-old Luke “Pax” Paxton has been out of the US military for almost a decade, adrift in an America he no longer understands, haunted by a mistake made in an unforgiving moment of combat. When an old army friend suggests they travel to Ukraine to help fight against the Russian invasion, he agrees, and together they cross an ocean to Lviv, the City of Lions. But Pax isn’t merely going out of the goodness of his heart. He carries with him the address of a former love, a Ukrainian woman named Svitlana whom he had known as a young soldier and has been unable to forget.
His feverish journey through Lviv takes him down winding and missile-cratered streets as he forms surprising connections with everyone from humanitarian volunteers to displaced Ukrainians and ordinary citizens trying to survive. And when Pax gets the chance to save someone dear to Svitlana, he just might be able to correct the wrongs that have wracked him with guilt for so many years.
Inspired by the author’s time in Ukraine, Daybreak is a deeply moving love story, as well as an exploration of the struggle to find meaning and redemption in the midst of war.
About the Author
Matt Gallagher is a US Army veteran and the author of four books, including the novels Youngblood and Daybreak. His work has appeared in Esquire, ESPN, The New York Times, The Paris Review, and Wired, among other places. A graduate of Wake Forest and Columbia, he is the recipient of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Fellowship, and was selected as the 2022 Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum Writer-in-Residence. He lives with his family in Tulsa, Oklahoma.