Cherry

Nico Walker

A darkly autobiographical literary novel told by an unnamed narrator who falls in love in college, serves as an Army medic in Iraq, and returns home to spiral into opioid addiction and a string of bank robberies. Written by Nico Walker while he was actually incarcerated for robbing banks, the book blends blunt, deadpan prose with an unflinching look at war trauma and the opioid crisis. It is not a conventional romance; the central relationship is depicted as raw, troubled, and ultimately consumed by addiction rather than building toward a tidy resolution.