"Twenty-one Months" is a tender love story set during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, an election marked by optimism and charged with unprecedented political participation, as America embraced hope and rallied behind a historic journey toward a more perfect Union.
Aaron Wade and Tarek Haddad are childhood friends whose families are bound by tragic events brought to pass by the Gulf Wars. In 1991, the Wades lost a son to friendly fire in Desert Storm. Fourteen years later, they lose a daughter in law in a mass shooting in Wahrān, Algeria as anti-American sentiments mount abroad as a result of the second war in Iraq. While still reeling from his most recent loss, Aaron meets Savannah Green, a devoted single mother at a local campaign event. As they get further engrossed into the contest with volunteering assignments, love blossoms slowly amid voter registration drives, campaign rallies and primaries.
With the escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq, Tarek leaves a dream job in Manhattan to be by his father's side in Iraq where he reconnects with his once estranged country in ways he had never done before and gives back to the reconstruction efforts by tutoring kids at a bookstore.
At the height of his seamless romance with Savannah, Aaron learns that Tarek had been lured to extremism following the murder of his father during the civil war. Suddenly, love, friendship and patriotism compete for Aaron's loyalty as readers get swept from a lazy summer in the deep American south to the treacherous slums of Baghdad.
Set mostly in North Carolina, the novel has a southern charm and an international plot. The characters are multicultural with emotional demons to slay and lean on the promise of the presidential campaign to bring closure to their own personal tragedies.
Twenty-one Months celebrates a comeback. It cheers love, hope, civic participation, and the reinstitution of America's democratic vistas while looking back nostalgically at a momentous page in American history. It compels us to look inward with a different lens and ask hard questions. Twenty-one Months is an honest conversation that begs for the consciousness, constructive disruption, and proactive participation of the American people in U.S. foreign policy. It implores us to look back at a more optimistic and less divisive time.
