The Valley

January 12, 2015
A junior officer referred to as Lieutenant Black, the hero of Renehan’s uneven first novel, looks into suspicious goings-on at a remote American military outpost high in the mountains of Afghanistan. Initially, Black uncovers the harmless shooting of a goat, but otherwise makes little progress in his investigation. Yet with each passing day, the awkward silences and unfinished sentences of those he’s interviewing convince Black that something far more worrisome than the shooting of native livestock is at stake. Renehan draws on his experiences as a former field artillery officer in Iraq to provide clear insight into the minds of soldiers operating under extreme pressure. After a captivating first half of fresh prose and a driving narrative, however, the story loses its way and turns predictable and introspective. The rot that has been infesting the outpost fails to surprise, and Black’s interior thought process is less interesting than the actions he has been ordered to carry out. Agent: Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic.

February 1, 2015
From a first-time novelist, a military thriller packed with action and mystery.The story begins and ends with relative quiet, but the reader hungry for action need not worry. Lt. Black is stationed at the relatively safe Forward Operating Base Omaha in Afghanistan when he gets randomly assigned a 15-6 investigation, "the commander's initial inquiry into possible wrongdoing." Apparently, an Afghan village chief in Nuristan complained that an American soldier accidentally killed a goat. Black's job is to fly to Combat Outpost Vega "up the Valley" and speak to everyone, gather facts about the apparently minor case and report back to headquarters. Once Black arrives, most of the soldiers refuse to talk to him, and the NCOs are openly hostile and disrespectful. They are rough people in a rough place. There are many valleys in Nuristan "where people died hard deaths," but "there was only one Valley....It was the farthest, the hardest, and the worst." Surrounded by the lurking Taliban and aggrieved villagers all close by, the American soldiers (and readers) are guaranteed all the excitement they can handle. Never what it had seemed in the first place, the situation deteriorates rapidly. The combat scenes are intense, believable and frightening. The troops need to call for help, but will they get through? "Communication was life," the narrator notes as the Americans try to fight off an attack, and "there was no pay phone in the Valley." "What the hell," one character asks, "is the end of the world?" Clearly, it's the Valley in Nuristan. There are a few points of confusion in this fast-paced drama, but whether that's in the telling, the reading or the fog of war, they detract little. A must-read if you want a glimpse of the turmoil Americans faced in Afghanistan or if you just want a page-flipping good yarn.

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February 1, 2015
Renehan borrows the plotline from Heart of Darkness, in which a naive young man is dispatched to throw light upon unspeakable horror. Lieutenant Black is shuffling papers on FOB Omaha, in Afghanistan, when he's assigned to investigate an incident at a firebase near the Pakistan border. Warning shots were fired in the nearby village, but no harm was done, and the investigation should be routine. But as Black interviews enlisted men (the commander, another lieutenant, is mysteriously absent), the plot sprawls. After Black commits what seems to be a boneheaded error with the village chief, the firebase is fiercely attacked. Amid the chaos, Black at last deduces the horror, though he's wounded in the process, and the firebase is almost overrun. The long firefight is exciting, but Renehan works so hard at suspense that it almost parodies itself, and he leaves behind so many red herrings he has to spend 20 pages explaining what happened. Still, a novel about the war in Afghanistan is welcome indeed, and Renehan, who served as an artillery officer in Iraq, certainly knows what he's talking about.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2015

In this gripping and memorable first novel, a junior officer is asked to look into misconduct in the most remote and dangerous of Afghan outposts. Lieutenant Black, psychically wounded by an ambush on an earlier mission, goes to beleaguered Combat Outpost Vega expecting to investigate an incident of a soldier firing warning shots among civilians. But he soon finds little at the base--or in Afghanistan--is as it seems. A social faux pas involving the local village chief opens a door on events far darker and more sinister than a few warning shots--events that the platoon's soldiers are being pressured to cover up. And it will be up to Black to unravel the twisted threads, including everything from soldiers with ties to the local drug trade to the killing of Afghani children, to discover who is responsible. VERDICT Renehan, who served in the army's Third Infantry Division as a field artillery officer in Iraq, combines elements of mystery and psychological suspense with an almost sociological delineation of the customs of military life to produce a taut and harrowing tale of soldiers pushed to the brink and beyond by fear, exhaustion, and a powerful sense of the futility of their mission. The parallels to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are unmistakable. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/14.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2014

Never mind the reporting, the fiction coming out of war in the Middle East has been amazing; think Phil Klay's Redeployment and Michael Pitre's Five and Twenty-Fives. Renehan, a former U.S. Army Third Infantry Division captain, portrays a lieutenant in Afghanistan sent to investigate misconduct within a military unit in the Valley--a remote, almost mythic area reached by an endless chain of rifts and outposts. A Heart of Darkness feel.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015

In this gripping and memorable first novel, a junior officer is asked to look into misconduct in the most remote and dangerous of Afghan outposts. Lieutenant Black, psychically wounded by an ambush on an earlier mission, goes to beleaguered Combat Outpost Vega expecting to investigate an incident of a soldier firing warning shots among civilians. But he soon finds little at the base--or in Afghanistan--is as it seems. A social faux pas involving the local village chief opens a door on events far darker and more sinister than a few warning shots--events that the platoon's soldiers are being pressured to cover up. And it will be up to Black to unravel the twisted threads, including everything from soldiers with ties to the local drug trade to the killing of Afghani children, to discover who is responsible. VERDICT Renehan, who served in the army's Third Infantry Division as a field artillery officer in Iraq, combines elements of mystery and psychological suspense with an almost sociological delineation of the customs of military life to produce a taut and harrowing tale of soldiers pushed to the brink and beyond by fear, exhaustion, and a powerful sense of the futility of their mission. The parallels to Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are unmistakable. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/14.]--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.