Martyr!Martyr!

"Cyrus Shams, the novel's hero, is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: a mother whose plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident and a father whose life in America was circumscribed by killing chickens on a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet whose obsession with martyrs leads him into the mysteries of his past--toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying; and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she might not have been who or what she seemed. Cyrus is guided on his journey by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, and delivered ... to a world that teems with unforeseen wonders"--Dust jacket flap.