Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism
by Jennifer Percy
3.41 of 5 stars
3.41 · rating details · 281 ratings · 62 reviews 23
A riveting work of immersive nonfiction by a young, award-winning writer that begins with the story of a charismatic man—a Special Ops soldier who believes his PTSD is caused by demons—but becomes about the author’s obsession with the strange and mesmerizing world she encounters.

Jennifer Percy spent three years with a group of Christians in rural Georgia who performs exorcisms on the traumatized. Percy was brought to them by a special Ops soldier just back from Afghanistan, the lone survivor of his unit, which was lost during Operation Red Wings. He returned to Georgia and, struggling with PTSD and unable to integrate back into civilian life, considered suicide, until -- as a last resort -- he underwent an exorcism. After experiencing relief, he set out on a mission to bring soldiers from across America to Georgia for a similar deliverance.

In the tradition of Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain, Demon Camp is the strange and riveting tale of Percy’s journey into a world she is fascinated by, suspicious of, sympathetic to, and a world she becomes a part of. As she struggles to understand this soldier’s homecoming she crosses the line between journalist and participant, becoming exorcised herself.

This is a book about being haunted -- about the demons in and outside of us. It is about a soldier looking for atonement in a world that is offering none -- an agnostic who is obsessed with an exorcist. It is a mesmerizing account of how people reconcile faith and trauma and a brilliant and passionate work that heralds the arrival of a brave, new talent.



Jennifer Percy grew up in rural Oregon. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, the Indiana Review, AGNI, Best Women's Travel Writing, among others, and has been featured on National Public Radio and BBC"s World News. Percy has won a number of awards for her writing, including scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the first place award in American Short Fiction's Story Contest, and multiple academic fellowships. She is currently a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and received an Iowa arts fellowship from the nonfiction writing program. She recently sold rights for her first book Demon Camp, which is due out from Scribner/Simon &Schuster in 2013. - See more at: http://arts.gov/writers-corn...#sthash.k1467x8Z.dpuf