While most people would be thrilled when their brother comes back from war, Levi isn’t. He’s still lost in his place as at home and at school, unsure, too, of where he and Boaz even stand as brothers. When Boaz makes it home, things grow only worse for each of them — Boaz retreats to his room for weeks, unable to interact with even his own family members, and Levi devises several ways to find out what’s going on with his brother.

When he returns, Levi’s role changes from living for himself (and figuring himself out) to uncovering what happened to his now-silent brother. Did he enlist because of a bad relationship? Fear of not succeeding in college? Levi’s few chances at the inner workings of his brother reveal little other than a bunch of maps and addresses and the knowledge that Boaz hates riding in vehicles. Oh, and he plans on walking from their home in Massachusetts to Washington D.C. for some march.

You better believe Levi plans on following.

The Things a Brother Knows is the kind of book you can’t know too much about going into. From the cover and flap copy alone, it’s pretty apparent this is a story about war and relationships. But what Reinhardt achieves in this is a moving story about the costs and effects of war on the individual — both that on the good side and the enemy.

Levi is a well-written male in this story: he’s realistic, authentic, and true to himself even amid the changing family dynamic. He’d become somewhat accustomed to being the only child, primarily because of Boaz’s radical decision to enlist. Boaz had before him a bright future of ivy league colleges and a girl who would love him deeply. Why would he give it all up to go fight in a country no one could locate on a map? I find believable male main characters difficult to achieve, but Reinhardt does Levi extremely well.

The book is a slower paced book, but by no means is it necessarily a quiet book. As a reader you are immediately sucked in, but like Levi, you have to work through the muddled mess of relationships and feelings and the foreignness of what it’s like to come back from war. This makes reading slow essential; the clues Levi picks up about his brother are the same ones the reader can discover and put together, sometimes quicker than Levi himself does.

What was most powerful for me in this book was its lack of stance on the issue of war. While Things a Brother Knows is a war story, it’s not a moral story about war. Reinhardt doesn’t tell me whether I should be for or against it nor does she inform me who was right or wrong in the war (which remains unnamed and unplaced). Instead, she tells of one person’s internal struggle with decision making during the war, and the internal struggles those who don’t choose to serve make. For me, this book was intensely personal: one of my best friends — post college, post job, post marriage — chose to pursue enlistment and he deploys early next year. Many of us have wondered why, and this book may have answered it for me.

This is a layered book, one that begs for rereads. As soon as I finished, I wanted to return immediately to the beginning and read it again with another perspective. The first read was about Boaz. On a second read, I think I’d want to learn more about Levi.

Be prepared to be rattled at the end of this one. The last few chapters are emotionally wrenching and are precisely why this is anything but a quiet book.

This is my second Reinhardt book, and even though I wasn’t a huge fan of a prior title of hers I read, I’m glad to have picked this one up and purchased it at the Anderson’s YA Conference. This is a book I plan on talking to my kids because this is what their lives are and this is precisely what so many of them will experience in one way or another, either from the position of Boaz or that of Levi. It’s an essential read and one worthy of discussing. There is no question on intended audience here.