Book excerpt: A Morning After War fills a critical gap in C. S. Lewis biographies with unprecedented detail by tracing Lewis's wartime service, relationships, and earliest publications. Probing war's traumatic destruction upon Lewis's romantic expectations of tranquil life, this book surpasses literary analyses of Lewis's work by asserting a comprehensive definition of war literature. Equally, scholars and students of World War I, war literature, trauma studies, and C. S. Lewis will find this work an invaluable reassessment of central assumptions in their fields. Not least, here finally is the young C. S. Lewis preceding his usual and often idolized personas.