The Things a Brother Knows by Dana Reinhardt…let’s start with the first few paragraphs:
…I used to love my brother.
Now I’m not so sure…..(skipping a few words here)…I used to worship him too. All little brothers worship their big brothers, I guess. It sort of goes with the job description. think 
about it. Your brother’s face is one of the first you ever see. his hands are among the first to touch you. You crawl only to catch him. You want nothing but to walk like he does, talk like he does, draw a picture, throw a ball, tell a joke like he does, let loose one those crazy whistles with four fingers jammed in your mouth or burp the ABCs just like he does. To your little mind, he’s got the whole of the world figured out.
But then you grow up. you start thinking for yourself. You make your own decision and those decisions change you, and they can even change the people around you, and my brother made one whopper of a decision, and in the end, it’s made me really hard to love him anymore….
AND SO IT BEGINS with the words of the younger brother, Levi. Boaz’s decision was to join the Marines straight out of high school. He served three years in Iraq. Now he’s back physically, but Levi knows this is NOT the brother he knows. As Levi and the family struggle to understand the son’s/the brother’s/the grandson’s shift to reclusive returning veteran, more and more depth is added to the story through the characters (friends and family), the dynamics between friends and family, and Levi’s decision to follow his brother on a journey where only Boaz knows the destination. This book has humor, great dialogue and a timely subject matter – returning vets and their struggles seen through their eyes and their family’s eyes. I loved this book so much I read it in a day, really needing to find out just where Boaz was headed in this mysterious journey. Levi is seventeen and has all the same concerns any seventeen year old has – girls, sex, money, becoming an adult – and the love he feels for this brother he knows but doesn’t know pushes him to risk more than he thought he could. The ending is stunningly strong. I give this book a ‘ 2 Thumbs’ up for all (advanced 8th, high school)
