Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick

Purple Heart Reviews

• 
  Tatiana

  3.5 stars
  
  18-year old soldier Matt Duffy wakes up in an army hospital in Baghdad. His memories of the events leading up to his hospitalization are spotty at best, he is suffering from TBI - traumatic brain injury. Matt is told that an RPG exploded next to him while he and his partner were pursuing a suspicious vehicle down a dark alley. But private Duffy feels that that is not all. His dreams are filled with the images of a 10-year old Iraqi boy shot through the chest. Matt starts to think he might have killed the child in a frenzy of crossfire and just doesn't remember it...
  
  Although
  Purple Heart is a tiny book,
  Patricia McCormick manages to cover a lot of ground in it. Without being judgmental and not trying to obviously push her political agenda, the author talks truthfully about what comes with the glory of serving one's country. She describes the ambiguous relationships between Iraqi people and American soldiers, the emotional traumas military men experience daily, the disconnect soldiers feel with the real world and their families, the disregard of army officials of serious psychological issues soldiers go through, the need to sweep indiscretions and even crimes under the rug during war time.
  Purple Heart is a complex and truthful picture of military service.
  
  However if you follow current events at least superficially, this books doesn't really offer anything that you haven't already seen in news coverage or even movies like "The Hurt Locker." I think the novel would be of more interest to the readers unaware of what goes on in the world and Iraq specifically.
  
  Night Owl Reviews
• 
  Anne Osterlund

  Matt can’t remember. Not how he arrived in the army hospital. Or what year it is. Or who won the world series.
  
  Though he misses his unit. He knows he’s in Iraq. He knows he wants to get back to Wolf and Justin and Charlene. He knows he’s a soldier.
  
  But he doesn’t know why the army’s giving him a purple heart. Or why they won’t really ask him questions about what happened in the alley. With the dog with the broken tail. And the kid that floated-up, up, until all Matt could see was his sneakers.
  
  Maybe all that’s his imagination—a symptom of the “traumatic brain injury” or of winding up on the business end of an RPG.
  
  Or maybe his brain just can’t handle . . . whatever he did . . . in that alley.
  
  I’m definitely a Patricia McCormick fan. None of her books are light carefree reads, but I always leave them feeling satisfied, like I’ve learned something. And like maybe I’m a better person for the read. Pretty heady, amazing stuff.
  
• 
  Milly

  Audible Review
  
  2 stars. I know. I just didn't connect with Purple Heart. I was waiting for that emotional connection one disc after another but it failed to evoke any strong emotions from me. I still could not pin point as to what made this experience just two-dimensional and forgettable. The narrator was just okay, his voice rather too mature for an 18-year old teenager. Perhaps that's a factor, perhaps not. It was just lackluster IMO.
  
  Purple Heart starts with Private Matt Duffy, an 18-year old soldier, in the infirmary suffering from a traumatic brain injury after an RPG exploded next to him during an encounter with Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad with his mate, Justin. Matt finds himself having retrograde amnesia and mood swings due to his brain injury, not fully recalling what happened in the alley after they ran after the insurgents. As days go by and Matt begins to heal, Matt begins to remember fragments of that horrible day in the alley but eventually realizes that they are different from Justin's account of that eventful day. And he fears that the death of a young Iraqi boy, Ali, was his doing.
  
  This book gives us a good insight of American soldiers' lives in Iraq and the friendships they develop with their comrades who become brothers and sisters to them. It also gives us a glimpse of the possible dangers innocent friendships made with the Iraqi people could pose. Something so innocent could turn into something so deadly especially in a place where enemies hide behind children and women. Likewise, we see how our American soldiers are tested time and time again from all the killing and the deaths of their comrades they feel responsible for or mourn. It's no wonder many of them come out of this war (or any war) with post traumatic stress disorder and are haunted all their lives by the atrocities of war. Matt is no exception. And the only reason why Matt joined the army in the first place was so he could start helping with the expenses at home early and hopefully get his younger sister a chance to go to college.
  
  The ending IMO was predictable. I wished more from Matt's characterization. I should feel more for him but despite the challenges and inner turmoil he goes through, none of that seem to transcend through pages for me. When my heart should be breaking and my tear ducts emptying, they didn't. This book failed to melt my heart of Tin unfortunately. Perhaps a re-read will result to more stars.
  
• 
  Laura

  3.5 Stars
  
  The brain does some funny things to help protect us. Frustrating, but necessary. Some memories stay with us while others fade and disappear. The idea and science behind it never fails to frustrate and fascinate me. Should some things be forgotten?
  
  Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick jumps right in! Readers are introduced to an injured, groggy, and confused Private Matt Duffy in a hospital bed in Baghdad. He is suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI), so only hazy dreams and flashes remain of an incident in which he was injured and a young Iraqi boy was killed. Surrounded by uncertainties and strangers, Matt must try to piece together the puzzle of the day and his actions. I could feel Matt’s frustration, fear, and guilt on every page. It’s so frustrating stretching for a memory just out of reach--like trying to remember a dream. Matt’s need to remember pushes this story along with the right mix of mystery, suspense, humor, and sadness.
  
  I liked Matt instantly. By weaving together family memories about home and stories from his squad in Iraq, readers start to identify with Matt and his situation. You can feel his heart and emotion in his voice while talking to his sister and tears from the tenderness people show him in the hospital. I felt very protective of Matt. I wanted him to feel safe.
  
  Instead he is bombarded with paranoia, back talk and military jargon. Matt has to rely on his best friend and fellow soldier, Justin, to fill in the blanks and details of what happened when he was on the “business end of an RPG”. But who can he really trust when everyone seems to be following a whole new meaning to the “don’t ask, don’t tell”--I don’t want the trouble attitude. No one wants the truth.
  
  “I hear a lot of things in this office, she said carefully. And I forget a lot of what I hear. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
  
  Ms. McCormick paints a realistic portrait of a soldier’s life and environment in Iraq filled with dust, sand, suffocating heat, tension, and cocky attitudes. Readers will giggle and cringe at the crude talk, jokes and actions of the squad. I will never understand the “mother” jokes. **shakes head**…Boys! These young soldiers have to witness and perform such horrendous and painful orders, but who can they talk to about what may or may not have gone wrong? Stories from home about bio tests and dances feel so afar away from the streets they walk every day with possible threats and danger around every corner. What soldiers have to see, do, and forget will break your heart. I honestly can’t comprehend how soldiers can process and keep moving. Do they ever really heal and move on?
  
  This story captivated me all the way until the end. I mean the last page! The last image! The ending was just that though an image or snapshot that did not fit Matt’s voice or tone of the story for me. Those final images did not resonate with me at all. :( Still a very strong and powerful read though. I think every young reader should meet Matt.
  
  I will remember Matt's story.
  
  
  
• 
  Devon

  The main message of this book, and the theories and memories Matt (main character) portrays is amazing, and with each example or scenario has a message that links later in the book. Think of it as connect the dots. Generally, this book (in my opinion) is sad, mystery----ish, and suspenseful. It makes you think of each character in the book individually and personally, even if you dont know the character fully. At the end of the book, it REALLY makes you think of characters and pages you read in the beginning of the book. However, for some reason I did not enjoy Matt. Even being the main character, there was this little spark of him that made me not like him as much as I wanted to. Which made the book harder to read. I feel it was the actions and thoughts he had while figuring out the problem....
  
  But everyone has different opinions of characters; kinda like To Kill a Mockingbird. Different characters and different emotions make me either dislike or like a character more. Anyways, I encourage everyone to read this book if you like historical fiction with a little bit of suspense...
• 
  Celia Buell

  
  Purple Heart is about Matt Duffy, an eighteen year old soldier in the Iraq war. Injured and in the hospital, Matt can't help thinking that he killed someone, an Iraqi street kid he knew. As he fights to remember the incident while battling a head injury, something just doesn't seem right about the whole affair.
  
  I really have to say, I was not as much of a fan as I had hoped to be. The beginning hospital scenes seemed to drag on too long; they had no action and were really just kind of flat. There also didn't seem to be any character development.
  
  Though the climax and the lead-up to the discovery of the truth was supposed to be shocking and suspenseful, I really didn't feel much. That part of the story seemed to come a little too quickly, and then the ending, too, was also really flat.
  
  I am giving this book two stars simply because I try not to give anything one star if I end up reading it from cover to cover. However, the lowest I usually give has been three, so in that aspect, I really did not enjoy the writing of this novel.
  
  I also truly believe that it would have been marked as children's if not for all the swearing. It does not compare to any other war novels I have read, and it's really short and mostly irrelevant.
• 
  Jennifer Wardrip

  Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com
  
  Going to war wasn't a first choice for Matt Duffy, but it seemed like the most sensible. He hadn't done that great in school, so college for him didn't really make sense. On the other hand, his little sister was a good student, and joining the Army would provide the necessary funds to send her to college when the time came.
  
  Whatever his reason for joining up, Matt found himself in the middle of Iraq doing the patriotic thing for his country. Even though they warned the young soldiers during basic training, he was surprised by the heat, the noise, and the people. There were slow days with routine missions; welcome days after some of the scary attacks Matt had witnessed. Recently, they'd lost their squad leader, a fellow named Benson.
  
  Amazing that this fact is one of the few things Matt can remember as he wakes up and finds himself in a hospital, answering questions from a man in scrubs standing at the foot of his bed.
  
  When Matt begins to ask questions of his own, he learns that when he and his partner, Justin, followed an insurgent into a dead-end alley, there was an explosion and he suffered a TBI (traumatic brain injury). With the exception of a weakened right leg, everything else seems to be in working order. Doctors are prescribing rest and saying he'll be back with his unit in no time.
  
  With time to think, Matt is trying to remember just exactly what happened. As events of the attack begin to come back to him, he realizes he may have been responsible for something terrible. How can he bring back the memories - and does he really want to remember?
  
  Patricia McCormick shares the life of an American soldier in Iraq. YA novels dealing with the Iraq War are beginning to appear on bookstore shelves, and PURPLE HEART offers readers a chance to experience the war through the eyes of a young soldier trying to make sense of why he is fighting and whose lives he is effecting in this controversial war.
  
  McCormick reveals not only the point-of-view and mindset of American troops, but also a glimpse of the life of the regular Iraqi citizen trying to cope in a country at war. Teens thinking about military service, teens that have family and friends stationed in Iraq, or teens just curious about the distant place they hear about on the news will all benefit from and appreciate the service and story of Matt Duffy.
• 
  Nancy

  I don't like reading books about war, but I feel it's my social responsibilty to try and understand what young men and women go through in these situations. I am glad I read Purple Heart and have come to appreciate the service that Matt Duffy, an 18-year-old young man fighting in Iraq has given our country. Matt is in a Baghdad hospital t recovering from a traumatic brain injury, trying to recall the details and make sense of what happened. Where did the attack come from? Did he really shoot and kill young Ali, a 10-year-old Iraqi boy? Why can't he remember common words, will the severe headaches ever stop? Will he ever be able to walk without dragging his right leg? Through Matt's experience, we see the frustration of dealing with the military procedures, how they are bent and shaped to accomodate differences of opinion and authority.
  My heart goes out to young men and women who serve in this way. It also helps me keep in perspective my own small ills and complaints. Patricia McCormick is an author that is able to capture incredible sense of reality and of "being there".
• 
  Destiny Russell

  Goodreads Book Review
  Purple Heart was a thrilling book that kept me interested and on the edge of my seat wanting to know what happened.
  
  It’s a fictional book that begins with Private Duffy, a loyal soldier, who is injured in duty and makes the long road to recovery by relearning how to walk and think; all while piecing together the leftover shreds of his memories.
  
  I enjoyed taking a walk with Private Duffy down his road of self discovery. At first he had trouble, “... bits and pieces were coming back to him, things that made no sense” (42). He fell into a whirlwind of guilt, convinced he had something to do with the death of his Iraqi friend, Ali. “He took a deep breath, then spoke so quietly, he wasn’t sure he’d said it out loud. ‘[Duffy] think [he] killed him.’ “ (71). He felt awful, he couldn’t figure out what happened. The only thing that kept him going was, “... the idea of getting back to his buddies” (126). But when he was finally cleared, he didn’t feel quite right. He went to a holy place, searching for grace. He pulled out his purple heart, the one he thought he didn’t deserve, “... [and] without a word, [he handed it] to the priest. He hadn’t planned on this, but it felt right” (134). He eventually overcame his demons, and uncovered the truth of what really happened before that RPG exploded.
  
  I loved this book, the thought and fears so intricately woven into a meer one hundred and ninety nine pages was astounding. I would recommend this book to anyone with the need for some nostalgia, someone who faced tough situations but overcame them. Nine out of ten would read again.
  
• 
  Phil J

  What was it like to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom? What was the relationship between the US soldiers and the Iraqi civilians? How do our soldiers process what they have seen and done in war? Patricia McCormick does an admirable job of approaching these questions for younger adolescents.
  
  I recommend this book to students in eighth grade or above if they are interested in military life. The soldiers in this book are generally well-intentioned. They are loyal to each other and have a sense of duty and commitment to the mission. However, they are also uncertain about how the mission will affect the Iraqi people and whether it is possible to bridge the two cultures. Furthermore, the military brass is uninterested in hearing anything inconvenient about the consequences of the fighting.
  
  There is a noticeable Catholic element to the book. The protagonist struggles with the concepts of guilt and confession. It adds urgency to the story.
  
  There are potentially offensive elements. The soldiers use profanity and make crude comments about women. They tease each other with gay stereotypes. I think these elements belong here as part of realism, but I wish that McCormick would unpack them a bit more by having characters remark on them or reflect about them. The frequent references to "Don't ask, don't tell" will be lost on today's teenagers, and it should be explained in a footnote or something.
  
  This book is a hard PG13. Some would say R based on the f-words alone. Recommended for age 14 and up. McCormick does her research and writes effectively. I would like to read more of her work.
• 
  Sadie Solensky

  thank god im done with this book
• 
  Bethany

  "He reached over and took hold of the front of Matt's hospital gown as if he were grabbing hold of him by the straps of his vest. Then he let go and patted Matt on the cheek. 'You were lucky, man.'
  'There was a dog,' Matt said.
  Justin frowned. 'What?'
  'Dog,' said Matt. 'There was a dog.'
  Justin drew back slightly. 'Dude, I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.'
  'He was near the... you know, when you throw stuff away..." It was maddening. He couldn't remember the word.
  Justin looked away, scanning the room.
  'The dog!' Matt punched the mattress with his fist. 'He had a broken tail.'
  Justin stood up. He seemed to be gesturing for someone.
  Matt jerked his head to the side, to see who Justin was calling for. A bolt of pain shot through his skull. He clenched his head and cried out in agony."
  
  Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful book! Absolutely beautiful.
  
  Purple Heart was a moving book, one that made my day. I love many books, but military books are always a favorite of mine to read. It gives me sanity, and understanding. A reality check, it gives me.
  
  Private Matt Duffy was on the business end of an RPG in Iraq, when he was hit and went flying. He awakes in an army hospital, he is diagnosed with TBI, traumatic brain injury.
  
  Matt is awarded with the medal of the Purple Heart, but he feels like he does not deserve the medal. He is just confused. And he wants to get back with his army men.
  
  While recovering from his brain rattling injury, and while struggling to remember simple things, Matt has a haunting memory that keeps coming back to him. A little innocent Iraqi boy that Matt knew, getting shot and picked up off of his feet, bullet hole in his chest. That's what he remembers right before getting hit by the blast. This memory sticks with him, and it chills him to the core every time he thinks about it.
  
  Soon, though, Matt is sent back to work with his army squad. He is reunited with his friends, but he can't help but notice that everyone has changed a little since the time he was hurt. Something has changed inside Matt too, and he thinks it has to do more with the injury.
  
  Purple Heart was absolutely moving to me. It brought tears springing to the corners of my eyes by the end of the book. Everything about this book is perfect. Simple, but perfect in every way.
  
  This is one of those stories that gives you a taste of reality. It gives you an idea of what exactly men and women fighting for our country have to go through every day. It is not lollipops and sunshine out at war. There are more things to fear than say a biology quiz. It is life and death out there, and things really are serious. Patricia McCormick captures this idea very well, or at least what I would think would be very well; I'm no veteran, but I respect veterans deeply.
  
  I felt Matt's pain. I felt it from page one until the end. I felt tugged and confused and hurt when reading, which was going through him the whole time. Matt meets people who really change him, and people come and people go, and it is up to him to keep moving on.
  
  This book gives me an idea of what really is loyalty and trust. A real friend will protect your back, and they will rely on you to protect theirs.
  
  The cover of this book is gorgeous. It is simple, but the silhouettes really capture the tone of the book. Whenever Matt refers back to the Iraqi boys playing soccer, I stop reading for a moment to look at the cover and reflect for a moment.
  
  After reading Purple Heart I put on one of my favorite bands, and it makes me think about the book. If you've never listened to Sleeping At Last, I'd recommend listening to them. You might even cry after reading this book if you're sensitive. It is just beautiful.
  
  My final thoughts? Oh, I could use a million words, using a brilliant word of the day, like Justin does throughout the book (It made me smile and crack up a little, with the words he came up with). But one word just keeps repeating and echoing through my skull.
  
  Beautiful.
  Beautiful.
  Beautiful.
  
  "All around him people were screaming. Things were burning. A fine gray ash was falling, like snow. While Matt burrowed his face into her shoulder and wept."
• 
  Tammy Dahle

  My Thoughts:
  A Middle School Librarian asked me to preview this book before putting it on the shelf for her students. Purple Heart is a book I would have totally judged by it's cover and passed it over. I don't normally seek out books about war. I'm so very glad I had the opportunity to read Purple Heart and experience Patricia McCormick's amazing story.
  Purple Heart gives you a chance to experience the War in Iraq from a soldier's point of view. It's not pretty. Matt is laying in a hospital bed with a traumatic brain injury. As Matt lays there recovering he tries to piece together the moments he and a fellow soldier were caught in cross fire and a young boy was killed. We are with Matt as certain truths are revealed and the chain of events leading up to the explosion start to become more clear to him. Soon he is back in the field with his squad-but can he still trust them and can he still protect them. Everything is different and he is changed. He still needs to know what happened to this little boy and if he was the cause of his death. He can't move forward until he finds answers.
  Matt is a very likable character and very soon you find yourself rooting for him and his quest for truth.
  I loved having a first hand look into the Iraqi War, The soldiers and The civilians. It gave me better understanding into the relationships that have been built between the Iraqi people and soldiers and the politics that rule both their worlds.
  My 16 yr old saw me reading this book and became interested in reading it for his English class. Hopefully he enjoys it as mush as I did.
  I added this blurb from Patricia McCormick that I found on Amazon.com.
  From the Author:
  Patricia McCormick(taken from Amazon.com)
  Sometimes a book begins with a single, unforgettable image.
  A few years ago, I had the privilege of working on an unusual peace demonstration─one that united Vietnam vets with recent veterans from the war in Iraq and old-fashioned peaceniks. These unlikely groups were brought together by the American Friends Service Committee, the Quakers.
  As a group, we arranged more than 3,600 pairs of combat boots, each one tagged with the name of a soldier who'd died in Iraq or Afghanistan, in a display that was meant to symbolize the real human cost of the war. Nearby, we laid out a pile of civilian shoes to symbolize the uncounted men, women and children who'd died in Iraq.
  One pair of shoes caught my eye. It was a pair of sneakers, just the right size for a ten-year-old boy. I instantly saw that boy being shot in the chest, his small body flung into the air from the force of the blast. As much as I tried to forget such a horrific image, I couldn't. And so I spent the next few years imagining how such a thing could happen.
  Purple Heart is a fictionalized look at that death, and how two young American soldiers may or may not have been involved in it. It isn't an anti-war book. It isn't a pro-war book. It's an attempt to portray how three children─two eighteen-year-old Americans and a ten-year-old Iraqi boy─have been affected by war.
  It's estimated that more than 650,000 civilians have died in Iraq. Because this war has been fought in cities, in and amongst families, civilian fatalities have become the "signature" of this conflict─causing profound moral conflicts for soldiers and profound losses for those families.
  I finished this book with as many questions as I had when I started. I came away with a deepened respect for our soldiers, a better appreciation of life in a war zone, and a strengthened commitment to peace. My hope is that readers will, too.
• 
  Aaron

  Readers will be quickly drawn into the experiences of Matt Duffy, an 18-year-old engineer serving in Iraq during the most recent war there. He has woken up in a hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone as he recovers for a head injury that he incurred in an alleyway altercation. There seems to be some sort of mystery involved with what happened in the alley because a young boy, who had been hanging around with his unit, was also killed during the altercation.
  
  Due to his head injury, he is unable to remember the events as they happened, but he is getting glimpses of his memory as he starts to recover and with the help of an army psychology who has been assigned to evaluate whether he is ready to head back into combat.
  
  As he starts to recover his memories, Matt introduces the reader to the other people in his unit, who have each become very important people in his life. Though they haven't been together long, they all consider each other to be family. This only makes what has happened even more difficult to handle.
  
  McCormick is a master at creating characters and her writing style easily draws the readers into the tale. Through Matt and those around him, readers will get to experience what it can be like to go through battle and deal with the consequences of people dying, both your friends and your enemies.
  
  My only problem with the book is it seemed to present an extraordinary experience rather than highlighting what the average solider goes through. The events that led to Matt's injuries are not something that happen to everyone who has gone to Iraq, and as a result really present a dramatized version of the horrors. This doesn't draw away from the interest of the story, and it is also not an exaggeration, but it would be like telling the story of My Lai in Vietnam and presenting it as the story of what Vietnam vets experienced.
• 
  Nico

  Wow. After reading this, I seriously needed some time to catch my breath. Between my past family and present family having fought/fighting in the army, the topic of war has always been very close to my heart and I admit I'm picky about what I read with this topic. I hate novels where the army is mocked or put in a bad light or just written in a sloppy style because I read in my family's letters and other books how horrible and life shattering war can be. This novel blew me away. I read it in one night just because something about it wouldn't let me put it down. It's about a soldier who wakes up in the hospital and realizes that he was blown up by a RPG (basically like a grenade). He's awarded a Purple Heart, but he can't remember the incident that caused him to receive it. He has a form of concussion which causes memory loss, trouble thinking of common words etc. The first half of the book is him recovering and trying to understand what happened and if his nightmares are really his reality. The second half is when he's out of the hospital and it's when the chaos really starts. I didn't ADORE McCormick's writing style, but the plot was so amazing, it didn't really spoil anything. The ONLY reason it is 4 stars is because I felt the ending wasn't full enough and wrap things up and didn't leave enough to leave us wondering what happened next. There were just a lot of lose ends. It was one of those books where I wondered where the next chapter was. But the rest of the story just made up for everything so much I barely even remember the parts I didn't love. Overall, a great overnight, can't put down, compelling read. There's death and realizations that shock you and make you think for hours after you've finished the book. A great read.
• 
  Jamie

  This is on the 2014 Abe list.
  
  I struggle with Patricia McCormick... I absolutely loathed Never Fall Down; it felt appropriated, colonialist. With Purple Heart, once again she's done a lot of research and seems to have immersed herself in interviews with Iraq war vets and family members. She used the 3rd person to flesh out Matt's story of surviving an RPG with traumatic brain injury and his return to the front. And even though I was intrigued by Matt's story and horrified by the deeply layered "don't ask, don't tell" culture of the U.S. military, something about this entire book rang hollow. It felt journalistic. The moment she has Matt use the phrase "goofing off" to describe how he and his squad hang out, I thought: yep, this is a middle aged woman here. As we would say in YA class, there was way too much annoying "authorial intrusion."
  
  That said, McCormick takes on an important issues that are relevant for today's teens: the ongoing war in Iraq, the draw of military service, young vets returning home and being sent back out to the front with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.
  
  Young readers will be swept up in the mystery of what happened to Matt, to the little boy, with his friend Justin. We regain memory as Matt does--somewhat ok storytelling.
  
  And now I'm going prioritize reading The Yellow Birds, National Book Award finalist, written by a veteran of the Iraq War. I think I value authenticity over research.
  
• 
  Terri

  There is a plethora of young adult literature being published of late concerning contemporary warfare, its effects on those left behind,and the impact on those who serve. "Purple Heart" focuses mostly on the ramifications of warfare on the soldiers who fight. Eighteen-year-old soldier, Matt Duffy, wakes up not knowing where he is or what has happened. He is in a hospital in the "Green Zone" in Baghdad, Iraq, suffering from TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury. After receiving a "purple heart" for being injured while serving, he begins to piece together the events that have brought him here. He repeatedly sees in his memory a candy wrapper, razor wire, a dog, and a boy he recognizes as Ali (the ten year old Iraqui boy he has befriended). Once he pieces things together, he learns that many aspects of war reside in the gray, rather than clearly being black or white. There are no easy answers to the many tough questions that war inspires.
  
  "Purple Heart" is a fast, compelling, contemporary read that will appeal to both boys (for the war action) and girls (for the compelling characterizations). There is plenty of fodder for discussion here as well. Some mature language and discussion by characters is included, though nothing gratuitous or graphic. There is violence, but that is to be expected in a book of this nature. Highly recommended.
• 
  Stephanie

  I want people to read this book thus the five star rating but for me it’s more of a 4.5. Patricia McCormick is a writer I admire and wished I have her job lol Formerly a journalist she does a great deal of research and seeks to expose truth and bring you into the experience she’s protraying. This book is about the Iraq war and follows the story of Matt a soldier wounded in confusing circumstances. McCormick explores the ideas of right, wrong and the grey area that colors our lives. This book inspires questions and feels true to wartime experience. Two thumbs up
• 
  Henry J.vasquez

  I think this book s alright and easy to read. I think it sad how Matt lose his memory and can only remember something. I also hate how his squad Had to leave him in the hospital. I also think something bad might happen to Justin and that letter might been the last thing he hear from him. But so far i like the book and it and easy book to read too, so it might be something you want to look in to.