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DRAWN 2 DANGER: A Memoir of Duty, Danger, and Discovery Book Three of the Irish Memoir Trilogy Written by J.P Sexton.
There's a particular kind of restlessness that never quite leaves certain men. You can spot it, the way they sit a little too still in comfortable rooms, the way their eyes drift when the conversation turns ordinary. J.P. Sexton has it bad. When we meet him in Drawn 2 Danger, he's back in Dublin, doing the right thing, good father, dutiful Garda, sensible life. And it's quietly killing him. So when the chance comes to join a UN peacekeeping mission to Mozambique in 1994, he grabs it with both hands. A year later, he'll do it again, this time headed into the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia, where the violence isn't abstract and the files on his desk have names attached to them.
What Sexton does brilliantly is refuse to make himself the hero. He's funny when things are absurd, and plenty is absurd, from UN coffee-break politics to trying to explain Gaelic to a bemused local. He's honest when things are ugly. And he's quietly devastating when the weight of what he's witnessed finally lands on the page. You'll meet Barry, the motorcycle-riding colleague who becomes his closest companion in chaos. You'll sit in on diplomatic standoffs, stumble through the Balkans on a shoestring of courage, and feel the creeping dread of a posting to Sarajevo. You'll also laugh more than you expect to.
This is the third book in his Irish Memoir Trilogy, but it stands completely on its own. Native in Donegal, shaped by New York, tested by Africa and the Balkans; Sexton has lived a life that earns every word he puts down.
There's a particular kind of restlessness that never quite leaves certain men. You can spot it, the way they sit a little too still in comfortable rooms, the way their eyes drift when the conversation turns ordinary. J.P. Sexton has it bad. When we meet him in Drawn 2 Danger, he's back in Dublin, doing the right thing, good father, dutiful Garda, sensible life. And it's quietly killing him. So when the chance comes to join a UN peacekeeping mission to Mozambique in 1994, he grabs it with both hands. A year later, he'll do it again, this time headed into the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia, where the violence isn't abstract and the files on his desk have names attached to them.
What Sexton does brilliantly is refuse to make himself the hero. He's funny when things are absurd, and plenty is absurd, from UN coffee-break politics to trying to explain Gaelic to a bemused local. He's honest when things are ugly. And he's quietly devastating when the weight of what he's witnessed finally lands on the page. You'll meet Barry, the motorcycle-riding colleague who becomes his closest companion in chaos. You'll sit in on diplomatic standoffs, stumble through the Balkans on a shoestring of courage, and feel the creeping dread of a posting to Sarajevo. You'll also laugh more than you expect to.
This is the third book in his Irish Memoir Trilogy, but it stands completely on its own. Native in Donegal, shaped by New York, tested by Africa and the Balkans; Sexton has lived a life that earns every word he puts down.