Enough To Pray

So the word's been out for a few years now.  I'm perpetually finishing and rewriting a novel about war.  It's been an equally difficult and rewarding project that sits forever in the forefront of my mind.  The first question I'm always asked is on which war I based my novel.  I didn't.  In the course of my studies, my independent research and through interviews I've come to know several major incidents in several major conflicts throughout various periods in history.  There isn't a single war that I can pinpoint that really captures the entire sentiment I want to convey.  I've tried, and the closest I've come is to very loosely take an example from the Spanish Civil War, but there's always something more that needs to be said that just won't fit.
My obsession with the subject started in University, when I decided to compliment my major in philosophy with  minors in history and English.  One studies fact, the other ideas, the third art, and it didn't take very long to realize that the ideas really didn't always fit the facts and that artists have always been anguished by the incongruencies.  It's a real problem with philosophy, and always has been.  As someone who studied only because I had a genuine interest in these things, I found it agonizing when some aristocratic thinker had taken it upon himself to dictate how the world should be, with little consideration of what the world actually was.  Not all philosophers were so flawed, but the frequency with which ill-informed ideas occurred is scary to someone who cares.  The real trigger for me was the disaster that was the First World War, which I believe Vonnegut described best as something like 'humanity's first failed attempt at suicide'.  The role that propaganda played in that situation, the folly that drove it from beginning to bitter end, and the absolute stupidity that "ended the war" are all unbelievable, and say something really important about human nature.  We can deny the facts and feed ourselves golden lies to make us think that someone in that war was fighting for something, but the learned know perfectly well that it just wasn't the case.  Dulce et decorum est, indeed...
As I was talking to people and reading and learning and thinking, I found myself increasingly frustrated by the hypocrisy at play anytime war comes on the scene.  I find myself unable to tolerate many people's opinions of war, not out of disagreement, but rather because I can understand the triggers behind these opinions.  There are good reasons for these wars to happen, and there seems to always also be a bad reason just the bat of an eye away.  This applies as much now as it has throughout history.  Propaganda annoys me because I recognize it when and where I see it.  Don't be fooled -- it's everywhere.  The more I see and the more I recognize, the less I find myself able to form an opinion of my own.  In a very personal way I'm torn when it comes to the subject and it's best sometimes just not to ask what I think if one has any hope of leaving the table in less than an afternoon.
My book is called Enough to Pray.  It is not religious, per se.  It does not advocate any particular point of view on the question of religion.  I created a place, created conflicting parties, created a war, and created an end to the war.  The book's purpose is not to moralize, but rather to call a few things to attention.  First, that we've lost sight of ourselves along the way.  Second, that humanity is a beautiful thing that is worth saving and toiling over and ever improving.  Third, that humans are capable of cruelty in the same degree that they are capable of good.  And fourth, that we should never lose hope, we should never let go of joy, and we should never take ourselves so seriously that we forget how to laugh.  None of these are new ideas, they've been expressed time and again by thinkers and artists and businesspeople and labourers and village folk and history itself.  My book is merely a reiteration of what we all already know, placed in a light that I have made my own.  It is a labour of love, and I've worked hard to make it into exactly what I want it to be.
It is forthcoming.  I promise.  Again.