Demon Camp

The Strange and Terrible Saga of a Soldier's Return from War

Author: Jennifer Percy

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A "chilling" (O, The Oprah Magazine), "darkly brilliant" (Bookforum) account of "the effects of war on the psyches of the soldiers who fight" (Esquire).

In 2005 a Chinook helicopter carrying sixteen Special Ops soldiers crashed during a rescue mission in Afghanistan, killing everyone on board. In that instant, machine gunner Caleb Daniels lost his best friend, Kip, and seven members of his unit. Back in the US, Caleb begins to see them everywhere--dead Kip, with his Alice in Wonderland tattoos, and the rest of them, their burned bodies always watching him. But there is something else haunting Caleb, too--a presence he calls the Black Thing, or the Destroyer, a paralyzing horror that Caleb comes to believe is a demon. Alone with these apparitions, Caleb considers killing himself.

There is an epidemic of suicide among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, men and women with post-traumatic stress disorder who cannot cope with ordinary life in the aftermath of explosions and carnage. Author Jen Percy finds herself drawn to their stories. Her main subject, Caleb, has been bringing damaged veterans to a Christian exorcism camp in Georgia that promises them deliverance from the war. As Percy spends time with these soldiers and exorcists--finding their beliefs both repellant and magnetic--she enters a world of fanaticism that is alternately terrifying and welcoming.

With "beautiful, lucid" (Los Angeles Times) lyricism, Demon Camp is the riveting true story of a veteran with PTSD and an exploration of the battles soldiers face after the war is over. As The New York Times Book Review said, "Percy's narrative may confirm clichés about war's costs, but it artfully upsets a common misconception that all veterans' experiences are alike."

Critic Reviews

“"You can't walk away from Percy's strong debut without feeling like you've spent a frightening moment inside the heads of soldiers who come home from war with nothing but demons, no place to go and no easy role to play. . . . An auspicious debut."”

A Buzzfeed Best Nonfiction Book of 2014
A Flavorwire Best Nonfiction Book of 2014
A New York Times Notable Book
"Demon Camp is for fans of Michael Herr's Dispatches or Hunter Thompson's own dark journeys through America; indeed, it's hard to describe Demon Camp as anything but a tour de force literary experience: exquisitely written, psychologically deft and nimble, and shocking. Jen Percy writes a book that is at once so singular that it speaks to despair and joy yawing over our collective horizon. Here is a new, utterly surprising world we can scarcely imagine being in, except in Percy's hands."--Doug Stanton, New York Times-bestselling author of Horse Soldiers
"Demon Camp is the amazing story of one man's journey to war and back. It's a tale so extraordinary that at times it seems conjured from a dream; as it unfolds it's not just Caleb Daniels that comes into focus, but America, too. Jennifer Percy has orchestrated a great narrative about redemption, loss and hope."--Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Forever War
"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
"A triumph of reporting, storytelling, and sympathy. Jennifer Percy writes as if possessed, not by her own demons but by the war-torn lives she documents. Like some pilgrim in a latter-day Inferno, with machine gunner Sergeant Caleb Daniels for her Virgil, she has descended into an all-American hell, eyes open, notebook in hand, and returned with this haunted and haunting fever-dream of a book."--Donovan Hohn, author of Moby-Duck
"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
"This is the book I've been waiting for. Lyrical, haunting, surreal, as fiercely brave as it is fearsome, Jen Percy's Demon Camp is both damning and redemptive, a shot straight to the hellish heart of war."--Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men

About the Author

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.