Demon Camp: The Strange and Terrible Saga of a Soldier's Return from War - Softcover

"Jennifer Percy has walked far out into The Twilight Zone and leads us into realms of horror and dread, mystery and high weirdness. I have never read anything quite like it. Are there devils? You might come away from this book thinking it's possible."--Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway

"This wild journey alongside madness leads Percy to the place where myth is conceived and destroyed, our wars overseas brought home as nightmares. You will begin to wonder how much pain is dreamed and if fantasy might be the way to cure it. A unique, fascinating and always surprising book."--Benjamin Busch, author of Dust to Dust

"Percy has taken a sensationalistic, tabloid-worthy subject and explored it in a remarkably clear-eyed and empathetic fashion, without a trace of condescension. Demon Camp is not only luminously written and exhaustively researched; it's an important account of post-traumatic stress disorder in modern warfare."--Teddy Wayne, author of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

"Thrilling . . . Percy is on to something essential here: understanding PTSD is one key to understanding our present cultural moment."--Brian Van Reet "The Daily Beast "

"[A] darkly brilliant book . . . Remarkable . . . Startling, precise prose."--Jeff Sharlet "Bookforum "

A New York Times Notable Book

A Flavorwire Best Nonfiction Book of 2014

"Demon Camp is the most urgent, most harrowing book to yet emerge from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Jennifer Percy is a brave and relentlessly powerful witness, again and again confronting us with the monsters of our own making. Written with haunting austerity, this exceptionally important book must be read not only by every voter but by every one of us yearning to be more humane."--Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn

"Beneath the taut, wry surface of Jen Percy's Demon Camp is a deeply felt investigation that is marvelously disturbing---a pitch-perfect blend of reportage, meditation, and outright fantasy that beautifully captures the wounds of mind and heart in ruins."--John D'Agata, author of The Lifespan of a Fact

"If you want to understand America now, read Jennifer Percy's Demon Camp. An electric, unflinchingly brave and entirely necessary debut."--Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh

Jen Percy is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received a Truman Capote Fellowship in fiction. She also received an Iowa Arts Fellowship from Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. Winner of a Pushcart Prize and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, her work has appeared in a number of magazines, including Harper's, The New Republic, and The Oxford American. She teaches writing at New York University.