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Tetherbird
A Duke squares off with a damaged, dangerous war veteran in TETHERBIRD, a novel called "amazingly powerful and beautifully written."
***
Former sniper Benjamin Cane's life is ripped apart after his version of the Bin Laden assassination is disavowed by the Marines, written off as a conspiracy theory. Displaying symptoms that could be PTSD, the man who returns from war is an entity his wife Mackey struggles to comprehend. Following an accident with his twin boys that never should have happened, Benjamin leaves the service, his life in a tailspin.
A Duke in the stately Gloucestershire countryside offers Benjamin a job in security. Surrounded by characters as eccentric as they are paranoid, Benjamin tries to navigate an environment rife with guns and outdated class structures, feeling like flotsam as a new civilian without his family.
Grisly and emotional twists surprise in this poignant tale narrated by cynical war crimes journalist Stanley Tern, who enters Benjamin's life to offer redemption and to pursue his own hidden agenda. Through layered, textured prose, TETHERBIRD asks whether our modern-day, gun-toting homelands may be more treacherous than any battlefield.
***
Former sniper Benjamin Cane's life is ripped apart after his version of the Bin Laden assassination is disavowed by the Marines, written off as a conspiracy theory. Displaying symptoms that could be PTSD, the man who returns from war is an entity his wife Mackey struggles to comprehend. Following an accident with his twin boys that never should have happened, Benjamin leaves the service, his life in a tailspin.
A Duke in the stately Gloucestershire countryside offers Benjamin a job in security. Surrounded by characters as eccentric as they are paranoid, Benjamin tries to navigate an environment rife with guns and outdated class structures, feeling like flotsam as a new civilian without his family.
Grisly and emotional twists surprise in this poignant tale narrated by cynical war crimes journalist Stanley Tern, who enters Benjamin's life to offer redemption and to pursue his own hidden agenda. Through layered, textured prose, TETHERBIRD asks whether our modern-day, gun-toting homelands may be more treacherous than any battlefield.
Kindle Edition
First published May 25, 2013
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About the author
Emily McDaid
2 books4 followersOriginally from Upstate NY, Emily McDaid began a career in technology PR in Boston and then unexpectedly found love across the Atlantic. Now married, with two children, and a dual UK and US resident, the transatlantic experience has formed the foundation for her writing. She currently lives in Boston with her family. In addition to writing, she owns a small PR business, and her hobbies include yoga, running and pretending to be a dinosaur.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 20, 2013
I loved this book. The story is such a good one, the characters are so interesting and the language is lovely—redolent with expression, description and feeling.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always a comfortable read. The storyline could be construed as controversial being taken, as it is, from a real life event. But it’s such a mind-engaging twist on that event that when I saw a film recently depicting the story as we’ve been fed it I found myself saying to the TV “Ha, I know what really happened!”
Told from multiple points of view, one in first person, the switches are so well sign-posted I was never confused.
The story tells the tale of Benjamin Cane, a supposedly-PTSD-suffering Afghanistan veteran, and Mackey, his long-suffering wife. There are also their small twin boys, an English Duke and journalist all twisted in to the fate of Osama Bin Laden and the use of a truth drug. I’m not going to say any more about the story because to do so would lessen its impact for other readers. But I will say it’s an exploration of so much: heroism, love, constancy, betrayal, and conflict on both a global and intimate scale.
There are shifts too in time and location (Afghanistan, the UK, the US) as the story jumps from the present into the past and back again. This is also handled well. At no point did I wonder where I was and who I was following.
I cared for Benjamin and Mackey. I wanted things to turn out well for them. I wondered about the narrator, and was not disappointed when his part in the story was revealed.
I can’t fault this book. There were no dips in engagement and no slips in believability or language.
A classy, powerful novel.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always a comfortable read. The storyline could be construed as controversial being taken, as it is, from a real life event. But it’s such a mind-engaging twist on that event that when I saw a film recently depicting the story as we’ve been fed it I found myself saying to the TV “Ha, I know what really happened!”
Told from multiple points of view, one in first person, the switches are so well sign-posted I was never confused.
The story tells the tale of Benjamin Cane, a supposedly-PTSD-suffering Afghanistan veteran, and Mackey, his long-suffering wife. There are also their small twin boys, an English Duke and journalist all twisted in to the fate of Osama Bin Laden and the use of a truth drug. I’m not going to say any more about the story because to do so would lessen its impact for other readers. But I will say it’s an exploration of so much: heroism, love, constancy, betrayal, and conflict on both a global and intimate scale.
There are shifts too in time and location (Afghanistan, the UK, the US) as the story jumps from the present into the past and back again. This is also handled well. At no point did I wonder where I was and who I was following.
I cared for Benjamin and Mackey. I wanted things to turn out well for them. I wondered about the narrator, and was not disappointed when his part in the story was revealed.
I can’t fault this book. There were no dips in engagement and no slips in believability or language.
A classy, powerful novel.
July 30, 2013
Tetherbird: A Review by Roger M. Woodbury
I confess I approached Tetherbird by Emily McDaid with a certain level of apprehension. This was going to be a novel about an American Afghanistan war veteran who was involved somehow with a member of minor British royalty in England. The author, a young American woman living as an ex-pat in England seemed almost an unlikely person to pen something that probably involved elements of life and times alien to her real world experience. I feared dreadful errors, technological or military nomenclatures that would appear flawed, or worse still, personalities jilted by an uninformed or unseasoned level of experience or the product of an overly liberal education. After reading the first few chapters, I found myself, withholdings withdrawn, plummeting deeper and deeper into the story.
The story is about a former Marine sniper (Benjamin Cane) who claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden by accident while in a sniper's position in Afghanistan. He wasn't sent to kill bin Laden, but bin Laden happened to stumble into his sights and he took the shot. Subsequently he was captured, tortured and finally rescued by Navy seals. There was allegedly a cover-up because it was inconvenient politically for the United States to admit that bin Laden was merely killed, instead of dramatically killed, which had to become the "official" description of how bin Laden was eliminated. The episodes of torture and confinement without hope of rescue and the subsequent lack of support at home by service or family was enough to break the mind of any one. It seemed to break Cain.
Still, Cane remained relatively stable and mentally leveled for he wanted no personal glory despite the politics of the situation. What in fact Cane wanted more than anything was to resume his marriage and life with his wife and two children. The structure of the story partially involves blog entries from Cane's estranged wife. The entries reveal how alienated she became from her husband due to his military deployments and ultimately how she felt the basis for marriage being destroyed by his changed nature resulting from his horrific wartime experiences. We see her PTSD as greater than his.
Of course, the children are always victims, and so also in the case of the Benjamin Cane family. The catastrophe of Cane the military man and the son, the innocent, contrives to finish off the Cane marriage. Frustrated and fearful of the man, her husband, brought back to her scarred from war, the wife has had enough. But her blog, and eventually her presence continues to illuminate the story throughout.
Benjamin Cane reconstructs his life, beginning a career as a security consultant, and it is through this that he becomes the employee of a member of lesser British nobility who is long on appearance and short on cash. Once on the Duke's estate, Cane doesn't really understand the Duke's perceived need for his services, but he goes about his business, in the course of which he discovers both a real and a perceived threat but not from a direction or a relationship he would have expected. Suddenly swept into a miasma of intrigue, he is implicated in a murder and ultimately gets to spend time incarcerated in the middle of the British criminal justice system.
The some-times narrator is a Brit, something I missed at first. His story is central to the resolution of the greater story of Benjamin Cane, but this is not clear until late in the book. I went back to re-read some sections to sharpen further McDaid's clear, concise writing. I realized then that Tetherbird wanted, needed, demanded, my full attention lest I miss something I'd regret later on.
It seemed more and more that everyone in the book suffered from PTSD of some sort. Everyone except perhaps Cane himself. As story progressed only the importance of trying to find a way to restore his family was important to him, and when the British narrator/journalist appears perhaps Cane felt he was the one key that might reopen the locked door of his failed marriage. The greater story unrolls while Cane and his narrator are paddling a canoe in the lake behind Cain's rustic cabin. The slighter, milder journalist is afraid the powerful warrior who takes him for a canoe ride might be capable of drowning him in the middle of the lake in America, where he so far from home. In the end, Cane and his interviewer/narrator reach an understanding and Cain embraces what is possibly his last chance at resurrecting his marriage and the only life he really wants.
Cain's future is clouded forever it seems. His chance to earn "half a year's salary for two weeks' work" as Duke Goddington's security man at the Duke's annual festival, were shattered by a killing. Toward the end of the book, it appears the application of a truth serum with proper medical questioning technique will clear him, reveal the truth, and perhaps enable the restoration of his marriage. At that point, I wasn't sure if McDaid was going to be bringing the story to a helpful conclusion or was merely getting tired of the telling. If there is a criticism for me to make, it all seemed to come together a bit too conveniently, involving skills not readily apparent on the part of the narrator and a bit contrived when compared with the carefully constructed story so far presented. I got by the "rowing" of a canoe, but the entire episode on the lake seemed to lack the authenticity of the rest of the story. I found the mechanics of the canoe ride on the lake to be jarring considering the clever and deliberate way the rest of the story was tied tightly together.
Finally finished, I was sorry the story had ended and as it always is with books I really liked, closing the covers on the story made me feel the loss of some friends, some people I really would have liked to know further. Read Tetherbird in solitude. Savor McDaid's mastery at weaving her language together and allow yourself to pay attention to all the voices. I invite you to do as I did and enjoy the story at leisure as it unfolds clearly before your mind's eye. If you do, you will join me in giving Tetherbird at least four stars and be tempted, were it allowed, to give it eleven.
I confess I approached Tetherbird by Emily McDaid with a certain level of apprehension. This was going to be a novel about an American Afghanistan war veteran who was involved somehow with a member of minor British royalty in England. The author, a young American woman living as an ex-pat in England seemed almost an unlikely person to pen something that probably involved elements of life and times alien to her real world experience. I feared dreadful errors, technological or military nomenclatures that would appear flawed, or worse still, personalities jilted by an uninformed or unseasoned level of experience or the product of an overly liberal education. After reading the first few chapters, I found myself, withholdings withdrawn, plummeting deeper and deeper into the story.
The story is about a former Marine sniper (Benjamin Cane) who claimed to have killed Osama bin Laden by accident while in a sniper's position in Afghanistan. He wasn't sent to kill bin Laden, but bin Laden happened to stumble into his sights and he took the shot. Subsequently he was captured, tortured and finally rescued by Navy seals. There was allegedly a cover-up because it was inconvenient politically for the United States to admit that bin Laden was merely killed, instead of dramatically killed, which had to become the "official" description of how bin Laden was eliminated. The episodes of torture and confinement without hope of rescue and the subsequent lack of support at home by service or family was enough to break the mind of any one. It seemed to break Cain.
Still, Cane remained relatively stable and mentally leveled for he wanted no personal glory despite the politics of the situation. What in fact Cane wanted more than anything was to resume his marriage and life with his wife and two children. The structure of the story partially involves blog entries from Cane's estranged wife. The entries reveal how alienated she became from her husband due to his military deployments and ultimately how she felt the basis for marriage being destroyed by his changed nature resulting from his horrific wartime experiences. We see her PTSD as greater than his.
Of course, the children are always victims, and so also in the case of the Benjamin Cane family. The catastrophe of Cane the military man and the son, the innocent, contrives to finish off the Cane marriage. Frustrated and fearful of the man, her husband, brought back to her scarred from war, the wife has had enough. But her blog, and eventually her presence continues to illuminate the story throughout.
Benjamin Cane reconstructs his life, beginning a career as a security consultant, and it is through this that he becomes the employee of a member of lesser British nobility who is long on appearance and short on cash. Once on the Duke's estate, Cane doesn't really understand the Duke's perceived need for his services, but he goes about his business, in the course of which he discovers both a real and a perceived threat but not from a direction or a relationship he would have expected. Suddenly swept into a miasma of intrigue, he is implicated in a murder and ultimately gets to spend time incarcerated in the middle of the British criminal justice system.
The some-times narrator is a Brit, something I missed at first. His story is central to the resolution of the greater story of Benjamin Cane, but this is not clear until late in the book. I went back to re-read some sections to sharpen further McDaid's clear, concise writing. I realized then that Tetherbird wanted, needed, demanded, my full attention lest I miss something I'd regret later on.
It seemed more and more that everyone in the book suffered from PTSD of some sort. Everyone except perhaps Cane himself. As story progressed only the importance of trying to find a way to restore his family was important to him, and when the British narrator/journalist appears perhaps Cane felt he was the one key that might reopen the locked door of his failed marriage. The greater story unrolls while Cane and his narrator are paddling a canoe in the lake behind Cain's rustic cabin. The slighter, milder journalist is afraid the powerful warrior who takes him for a canoe ride might be capable of drowning him in the middle of the lake in America, where he so far from home. In the end, Cane and his interviewer/narrator reach an understanding and Cain embraces what is possibly his last chance at resurrecting his marriage and the only life he really wants.
Cain's future is clouded forever it seems. His chance to earn "half a year's salary for two weeks' work" as Duke Goddington's security man at the Duke's annual festival, were shattered by a killing. Toward the end of the book, it appears the application of a truth serum with proper medical questioning technique will clear him, reveal the truth, and perhaps enable the restoration of his marriage. At that point, I wasn't sure if McDaid was going to be bringing the story to a helpful conclusion or was merely getting tired of the telling. If there is a criticism for me to make, it all seemed to come together a bit too conveniently, involving skills not readily apparent on the part of the narrator and a bit contrived when compared with the carefully constructed story so far presented. I got by the "rowing" of a canoe, but the entire episode on the lake seemed to lack the authenticity of the rest of the story. I found the mechanics of the canoe ride on the lake to be jarring considering the clever and deliberate way the rest of the story was tied tightly together.
Finally finished, I was sorry the story had ended and as it always is with books I really liked, closing the covers on the story made me feel the loss of some friends, some people I really would have liked to know further. Read Tetherbird in solitude. Savor McDaid's mastery at weaving her language together and allow yourself to pay attention to all the voices. I invite you to do as I did and enjoy the story at leisure as it unfolds clearly before your mind's eye. If you do, you will join me in giving Tetherbird at least four stars and be tempted, were it allowed, to give it eleven.
July 29, 2013
A suspenseful thriller with 3 facets from which the story progresses. Benjamin is deployed to Afghanistan where a hunch pays off but he is captured and tortured as a prisoner of war. When rescued and returned to the USA he deals with the aftermath of his experiences. His wife Mackey has issues of her own as she holds him accountable for deserting her with their twin babies. A horrific accident leads to Benjamin going abroad on a security job for an English Duke where things are not as they appear.
As he recounts his experience to a journalist we are taken on a journey to discover what really happened to Benjamin and where life will take him next. A well told thriller.
As he recounts his experience to a journalist we are taken on a journey to discover what really happened to Benjamin and where life will take him next. A well told thriller.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews