Some games are played for victory. Others are played for healing.

When Moose and Jonathan, infantry officers in the Canadian Army and best friends since meeting at Royal Roads Military College, deploy to Sarajevo as peacekeepers, they are thrust into the inferno of a genocidal war. Tasked with reopening the city’s airport—a vital lifeline for humanitarian aid—they soon confront the brutal realities of human violence and the fragile boundaries of moral certainty. Snipers deliberately target civilians, often children, while the soldiers who witness these atrocities are ordered to remain neutral, powerless to intervene.

For Jonathan, a Mohawk soldier from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, healing has always meant something different. He carries with him something older than the uniform he wears: lacrosse—the Creator’s Game, known as the Medicine Game when played for healing.

Some wounds cannot be left on the battlefield. And the journey home demands a different kind of courage.

Spanning continents and generations, from Canada’s Pacific coast to the shattered streets of Sarajevo and the living traditions of Six Nations, A Medicine Game is a haunting and tender meditation on friendship, sacrifice, moral injury, and the long road home. Rooted in memory and illuminated by love, it speaks to an ancient truth: we are not healed before we learn to love. Rather, it is love itself that leads us—gently, and sometimes painfully—toward healing.

Perfect for readers of Steven Galloway’s The Cellist of Sarajevo, Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.