Paul Rousseau is a disabled writer with work in Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, Catapult, and elsewhere. You can find more of his work online at Paul-Rousseau.com.
“Unique and haunting…. A mesmerizing and unforgettable meditation on a
stranger-than-fiction tragedy.” —Publishers Weekly
One month before his college graduation, Paul Rousseau is accidentally shot
in the head by his roommate and best friend.
At some point in the course of Paul and Mark’s friendship, Mark acquired—legally and
with required permits—five firearms. Those weapons lived with them in their college
apartment. It was a non-issue for the two best friends. They were inseparable. They
were twenty-two-year-old boys at the height of their college experience, unaware that
everything was about to change forever.
The bullet ripped through two walls before it struck Paul’s skull. Mark had accidentally
pulled the trigger while in the other room and—frightened for his own future—delayed
getting treatment for Paul, who miraculously remained conscious the entire time. In
vivid detail, Friendly Fire brings us into the world of both the shooting itself and its
surgical counterpoint—the dark spaces of survival in the face of a traumatic brain
injury and into the paranoid, isolating, dehumanizing maw of personal injury cases.
Friendly Fire is the story of a friendship—both its formation and its destruction.
Through phenomenal writing and gripping detail, Paul reveals a compelling and
inspirational story that speaks to much of contemporary American life.
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