Daybreak

A disillusioned American veteran volunteers for the war in Ukraine to reconnect with a woman from his past.

Daybreak is a work of art, a gleaming, fanged nightmare of a book by a major American author who himself is an Army veteran … Gallagher’s writing captures how rich and strange my native country is while layering the monstrousness of the new war on top … There is a privilege Americans have when it comes to narrating a foreign conflict, a privilege that isn’t always earned. Gallagher, however, has approached the topic of Americans in the context of Ukraine with humility and humanity. I can only hope Western politicians will be willing to do the same.”
– Natalia AntonovaForeign Policy

“In Daybreak, Gallagher provides readers with a nuanced, polyphonic, tender, and violent portrait of a country and its people rallying together to repel one of the world’s bullies for the sake of democracy, normalcy, and their very existences.”
– Julian ZabalbeascoaElectric Literature

“Echoes of Hemingway and Casablanca … this harrowing account of life in a besieged Ukraine reads like a bulletin from the front lines.”
Publisher’s Weekly

“Matt Gallagher has written an important and timely novel, which works as a powerful testimonial to Ezra Pound’s statement that literature is news that remains news. Daybreak is history and memory at its most raw, intimate, and brilliant, and is a book to be widely read and discussed.”
Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose

Daybreak takes the reader on a thrilling journey through war-time Ukraine. The plot moves at the speed of a road movie, intensifying every detail of the story, each word spoken by the characters who may well be based on people the author met during his recent trips to Ukraine’s front lines. Shocking and totally believable.”
Andrey Kurkov, author of Grey Bees

“Equal parts love story and war story, Daybreak is a profound meditation on idealism and its costs, a vital novel that arrives at a perilous time.”
Elliot Ackerman, New York Times bestselling author of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War

“We are living through such a renaissance of veteran’s writing, and Matt Gallagher is one of the very best. Daybreak is set in the Russia–Ukraine war, exploring the motivations and fates of Americans who go to fight with Ukraine. It’s an unsparing but empathetic character study — but it’s so much more than that. Reading it brought to mind the masterful work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
Kori Schake, War on the Rocks

” An absorbing character study of a man purging the ghosts of one war by attempting to fight in another. ”
Kirkus

“With bold themes of desire, courage, love, forgiveness, and sacrifice, Matt Gallagher has written the first great military-inspired novel of this post-Global War on Terror era.”
Bill McCloud, author of What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?