Daybreak

Gallagher (Empire City) returns with an affecting chronicle of a former U.S. soldier who finds meaning by joining Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Five years out of the Army and at loose ends, Luke Paxton accompanies his fellow Afghanistan veteran, Han Lee, to Ukraine in winter 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion. Arriving in Lviv, Pax looks up his former lover, Svitlana, whom he met in Milan in between tours in Afghanistan. At first Svitlana is cool toward him, and it turns out she’s separated from her lawyer husband, who’s at the front, and has a young son with eye problems. Judged unfit for combat because of his general discharge from the Army (the story behind this comes out later), Pax goes to work in a warehouse unloading supplies from the U.S. Then, news from the front forces him to join a dangerous mission that will allow him to exorcise the ghosts of his past. Gallagher’s plot artfully connects the present-day conflict to previous wars by referencing such stories as A Farewell to Arms and Casablanca without sacrificing a sense of urgency. This harrowing account of life in a besieged Ukraine reads like a bulletin from the front lines. (Feb.)