Charlie Christmas, Ademar Zarkan, and Prometheus Stone are the best of
America—united by war, scarred by displacement, and resolute in the face
of the troubles that rip the nation apart over three decades.
Christmas, a Somali translator with a split personality, and Zarkan, a
Muslim sharpshooter who defies gender and religious constraints to
graduate from West Point, are first brought together by Stone, a lapsed
Jew and an Army captain, amidst war and famine in East Africa. Their
ensuing journey—which takes them from the mean streets of Mogadishu to
the high desert of West Texas, from the barren plains of Indian country
to the rolling hills of Minnesota—is at turns tragic and uplifting.
Charlie’s son, Amir, is the bookmark in their lives, and the struggle to
raise him amid the predators of white supremacy and violent radicalism
is their life’s work. With the help of Buck, the bomb-sniffing dog with a
nose for danger, they prevail over Somali militias, pirates, white
supremacists, and ISIS terrorists in a splintering world that has turned
on itself like a serpent in the singularly obscene act of devouring its
own tail. A sweeping novel that digs deep into the backstories of some
of the beloved West Texas characters from
Seventh Flag,
Balman’s award-winning debut novel,
Murmuration
is a mesmerizing story of what it means to be American in the twenty-first century.