The Odyssey of Sergeant Jack Brennan
(Graphic Novel)

Jack Brennan is a Marine Corps sergeant whose infantry squad has been cleared to return home from a grueling deployment to Afghanistan. A few years prior, Sergeant Brennan lost one of his closest friends {u2014} a young combat veteran {u2014} to suicide and has vowed to do everything in his power to keep his Marines from a similar fate. On their last night in-country, Brennan, who has long kept a tattered copy of the Odyssey with him on deployment, shares his version of Homer{u2019}s classic with his fellow soldiers to help prepare them for the transition back home. Brennan plunges into a rich retelling of Odysseus{u2019}s long journey home from the battlefield at Troy, during which Odysseus and his men confront numerous obstacles {u2014} from the lure of a psychedelic lotus plant to ghoulish shades in the Land of the Dead to the seductive songs of the deadly Sirens {u2014} as they try to make it back to Greece. Along the way, Brennan and his fellow Marines map the struggles faced by Odysseus and his men onto their own {u2014} isolation, addiction, guilt, depression, and loss. Through his retelling, Brennan reminds his squad that the gulf separating the battlefield from the home front is deep, wide, and sometimes hard to cross {u2014} that it is possible to travel all the way home and, like the characters in the Odyssey, still feel lost at sea.