THE PEACE THIEVES: a novel

 

Forthcoming June 16, 2026 from Thistledown Press

 

 

 

Nothing bad

will happen to us now, not with you

standing sentinel at the edge

of our sleep, guarding 

against the peace thieves.

- From "My Father's Skin Looks Like the Surface of the Moon" by Selma Asotić

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Francis, a reserve army medic, deploys to Croatia in the spring of 1993 and quickly discovers that peacekeeping isn’t the easy duty he volunteered for. All he can do is observe the country tear itself apart — there’s simply no peace to keep — and endure months of stress, danger, and hopeless inaction. 

Thirty years later, Viva drives halfway across the country to meet Francis, the father whose identity her mother kept secret until her deathbed. However, the Francis she meets isn’t the callous bastard she always imagined, but merely a heartbroken, troubled man holding his life together with frayed, borrowed threads. Who probably needs her help, though he’ll never ask.

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"A deeply felt and deeply affecting look at the vicissitudes of war and its aftermath. Brent van Staalduinen captures the inner lives of his characters with a compassion and humour that for all their traumas makes their journey ultimately an uplifting one."

- Nino Ricci, author of SLEEP

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“For those whose mission it is to keep peace, war is never confined to combat zones. It seeps into the darkest crevices. It follows them home. In The Peace Theives, Brent van Staalduinen has written a novel that makes post-apocalyptic seem like fantasy: the apocalypse is here. It is now.”

– Wayne Grady, author of THE GOOD FATHER

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