Sixteen-year-old Plinko is attending basic training before high school starts up again in the fall. Feeling adrift from his own family, he moves in with an older soldier, where he forges an unlikely group of friends in the military. After 9/11, the military prepares to move into Afghanistan — to go to war. Plinko and his friends have no idea that the trajectory of their lives is about to be irrevocably altered. Drawn from the author’s experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan, Juiceboxers tenderly traces the story of a young man’s journey from basic training, to the battlefields of Kandahar, to the inner city of Edmonton, braiding together questions of masculinity and militarism, friendship and white supremacy, loss and trauma and hard-won recovery.

Benjamin Hertwig was born and raised under big prairie skies and has taught writing workshops for inmates, veterans, and students across Canada. His fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in places like the New York Times, the Globe & Mail, and the Walrus, among others. His debut poetry collection, Slow War, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Raymond Souster Award, and received the Poetry Prize at the Alberta Book Awards. He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award in Personal Journalism and is completing his PhD in post-9/11 conflict studies. His debut novel, Juiceboxers, was released this fall. He currently lives with his partner in inner-city Edmonton, where they run a bookstore together, along with a very large and gentle Saint Bernard rescue.