Operating Base Cornucopia: A three hundred-year-old fortress in the remote Iraqi desert where a few dozen soldiers wait for their next assignment; among them, Private Toby Durrant, a self-described “broke nobody.” Then a deadly ambush touches off events that put Durrant in the middle of a far-reaching conspiracy. Insurgents massing in the nearby hills, a secretive member of military intelligence, an abandoned toy factory, and a mysterious, half-feral child—Durrant must figure out the links between them if he’s to survive. A classic story of a decent man trying to do right under impossible circumstances, this blistering look at military life in “the sandbox” of Iraq marks the debut of a major new talent.

“[A] gripping first novel.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“[A] remarkable debut.... Zimmerman is a talent to watch.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

“Zimmerman adroitly depicts [Iraq’s] isolated moonscape—a place as liable to produce hallucinations and heat exhaustion as it is to churn up sandstorms that last for days.”
—Los Angeles Times

“The Sandbox sabotaged me. I read the first four pages and my sleeve got caught in the lives of these soldiers, and the story was gritty and real and offhand, and so I lost the day and the next, and I’m so happy to report back that this terrific novel offers us both the world of the conflict and another story just as powerful. Zimmerman’s made a fine book.”—Ron Carlson, author of The Signal