Raft of Stars by Andrew J. Graff

 

This isn't a great novel, in the sense of being deathless literature, but it's probably good enough. The fact it's set in 1994 is at least in the cover copy--and clear in the text pretty quickly, if you miss that--and it's evident that Graff loves rural Minnesota and the people of it; the novel seems to be gesturing in the direction of what the people who survive going off to war (and the people who survive those who don't) live with, how things change for them, how they themselves are changed. There's some real life-and-death stakes in the story, and the climax is actually people doing stuff, which makes me wonder just what the heck they're teaching MFA students at the University of Iowa these days.