The writer Kathryn Joyce has written a remarkable essay for Pacific Standard that I hope some of my students will read. Part of the larger conversation about PTSD I’ve been having all year in light of Jennifer Percy’s Demon Camp, this essay, set in upstate New York, is moving and useful and spectacularly written. Here’s a snippet.

The Facebook profile contained only photographs—Paul on military training exercises, Paul as a tourist in Asia, Paul in his olive-drab dress uniform, looking like he’d just stepped out of a World War II movie, and, for his profile image, a shot taken from a distance: Paul sitting atop a mountain, facing away.

Illustration by Corey Brickley