Long Road Home

After losing his leg-and his trademark helmet-B.D. returns home from Iraq to begin a remarkable journey of healing in this Doonesbury book.On a road outside Fallujah, an RPG blows apart a Humvee and upends the life of a former football star named B.D. As a medevac chopper swoops down, the wounded Guardsman hears 'Not your time, bro. Not today'. The Long Road Home: One Step at a Time chronicles seven months of cutting-edge cartooning, during which B.D.-and readers of the strip-experienced the kind of personal transformation no one seeks.B.D. survives first-response Baghdad triage, evacuation to Landstuhl, and visits by innumerable celebs, both red and blue in hue. He's awed in turn by morphine, take-no-guff nurses, his fellow amps, high-tech prostheses that cost more than luxury cars, and his family, including the daughter who hand-delivers succor, one aspirin at a time.From rebuilding tissue to rebuilding social skills to rebuilding lives, B.D's inspiring, insightful, and darkly humorous story confirms that it can take a village, or at least a ward, to raise a soldier when he's gone down. 'Thank you for getting blown up,' offers one of B.D.'s visiting players. Replies the coach, 'Just doing my job.'