A Tale of Haunted Love Captures Wartime Ukraine

Matt Gallagher’s new novel Daybreak, set amid the churning horror of Russia’s war against Ukraine, has been marketed as a love story. Yet it is ultimately a book less about romance than about the love of stories—and in particular, the stories we tell ourselves, and others, so that we can survive. Daybreak is a work of art, a gleaming, fanged nightmare of a book by a major American author who himself is an Army veteran.

Its hero, a U.S. veteran of the global war on terrorism named Luke “Pax” Paxton, ostensibly travels to Ukraine shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 to search for an ex-girlfriend named Svitlana. Pax appears to also be searching for absolution. His time as an Army infantryman has disassembled him, and he is unable to adjust to civilian life. His internal monologue is full of self-recrimination. He struggles to simply act normal in the company of civilians, let alone hold down a regular job. Clumsy in his speech and his emotions, fumbling, eager, and frequently angry, Pax has one North Star, which is his desire to be useful.

Many veterans have struggled to adjust to the civilian world in recent years, and a number of them have turned to Ukraine in order to feel useful once again. At least 50 Americans have so far been killed in Ukraine, and the overwhelming majority of them were veterans. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, U.S. veterans have volunteered to train Ukrainians, while others have organized donation drives and supply runs.

Daybreak: A Novel, Matt Gallagher, Atria Books, 256 pp., $27.99, February 2024

Some emerged as wasteful, scandalous figures—the inevitable consequence of the largest European conflict since World War II attracting its share of lowlifes—but the majority have put their lives on the line for a noble ideal, the chance to repel an obvious and perilous evil.

This evil is nothing new, of course. Ukraine has suffered from barbaric wars before, and those wars each created their own ghosts, leaving dark marks on the beautiful landscape. Even people who don’t believe in apparitions can recognize Ukraine as a profoundly haunted place, where the uncanny nature of armed conflict has seeped into the bones of the land, its history, and its society. Gallagher’s writing captures how rich and strange my native country is while layering the monstrousness of the new war on top.

“What … could be up there?” Pax wonders of the sky as an air raid siren blares, suddenly aware of the fact that while Americans controlled the sky in Afghanistan, the situation is vastly different in Ukraine. That sense of vulnerability, the sense of being skittering prey to missiles and killer drones and mortar shells, is unfamiliar to Americans, even many of those who served, but a reality for many people elsewhere.

In a macabre but satisfying way, I found Daybreak to closely match the night terrors I have suffered from since Russia invaded Ukraine, the result of long nights of staying on the phone with friends and relatives as the sky exploded above them. There is a loss of control there, the feeling of being trapped in a screaming vortex, even as you try, like Pax, to be useful.

A pivotal scene in Daybreak occurs at a gathering of Lviv society, comprising not the gangsters and oligarchs whom Americans too often associate with Ukraine but cultured people shocked by the arrival of full-scale war. Pax gets to tell an inspiring war story to the assembled, a story that is also a lie. But, as the narrator points out, “It was the kind of war story people wanted. Tenderness in devastation. It was the kind of war story people expected. Fellowship amidst ruin.”

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The idea of merciful lies runs throughout the book. In light of how aid to Ukraine is hotly contested by slippery demagogues in the halls of U.S. power—not to mention how disastrously the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was executed—the political ramifications of these lies are almost unbearable to analyze.

Gallagher’s handling of Svitlana, the ex-girlfriend whom Pax seeks to protect, is particularly noteworthy. Far from the pliant sex kittens many American men hope to encounter in Ukraine, she is a strong-willed and prickly woman. Gallagher could’ve turned her strengths into another caricature—think a Ukrainian Valkyrie, a popular theme for memes and pageant costumes. But Svitlana’s inner world is also tumultuous and has to do with more than just the war. She has vulnerabilities and regrets. If she has a sword, it’s in her words, which can shatter or save a person.

Works by Western writers (including Russian Americans) on Ukraine are bound to come under heavy scrutiny at a time of upheaval, and Gallagher’s narrative is not going to be for everyone. Yet it is not a tourist’s narrative, nor is it exploitative. If you’ve ever tried to care for someone who has lost part of themselves to war, you might recognize those feelings, even if that war wasn’t Ukraine’s. That sense that someone has been scooped out by conflict, that they’re searching for something to replace a loss, is familiar to veterans and people who care about them across the world.

Russia’s war is senseless and genocidal, but in the shadow of horned death, people continue to tell stories—as Pax does, as Svitlana does. A lot of what is written in the ashes is lost, and Ukrainians’ stories should always come first. There is a privilege Americans have when it comes to narrating a foreign conflict, a privilege that isn’t always earned. Gallagher, however, has approached the topic of Americans in the context of Ukraine with humility and humanity. I can only hope Western politicians will be willing to do the same.