A Soldier's Dream

For six months in 2006, a charismatic young U.S. Army captain and Arab linguist named Travis Patriquin unleashed a diplomatic and cultural charm offensive upon the Sunni Arab sheiks of Anbar province, the heart of darkness of the Iraqi insurgency. He galvanized American support for the “Sunni Awakening,” the tribal revolt against Al Qaeda that spread through the province and eventually across Iraq, a turning point that led to dramatically lower levels of violence in the country.

The Awakening may not have succeeded without Patriquin, who was so beloved by Iraqis that they adopted him into their tribes and loved him as a brother. This is the true story of a man who loved Iraq, and a soldier who helped engineer the turning point of the Iraq War.

It is the story of America’s T.E. Lawrence—Travis Patriquin.

“He was America’s Lawrence of Arabia.” — Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman (Ret.)

"A truly inspirational story about an American soldier who epitomized our country's values." — The Huffington Post

“Compelling… carefully reported and briskly written … a tale of how even in modern warfare, with all its cultural intricacies and geopolitical considerations, two men can play a decisive role through dint of personality, adept maneuvering and, yes, a fair amount of individual ambition.” — Los Angeles TimesWilliam Doyle is the award-winning author of Inside the Oval Office: The White House Tapes from FDR to Clinton and An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. He also served as director of original programming and executive producer for HBO, and won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary for his A&E special based on Inside the Oval Office.