** spoiler alert ** 
 The book follows Billy Pilgrim, a young man who doesn't really fit in anywhere, as is a soldier in the last year of WWII. He is captured and endures awful conditions. He and the other POWs are one day cleaning the windows in Dresden, spend the night sheltered in a meat locker in the slaughterhouse while bombs fall above, and find total destruction the next day. 130,000 have died and they (the POWs) have no food or water. 
 How can that not change a person? How can one deal with that? How can people see and do horrific things and then come back to regular life? Since we can't seem to stop fighting with and killing each other, these questions are as relevant today as they were then. 
 The book looks at the lines between life and death, between reality and fantasy, and between internal and external processing of information. Billy processes everything internally, he is abducted by aliens who try to help him understand life on Earth, he is half-dead when in the war and half-living when he is back at home and working as an optometrist. His mantra of "so it goes" when someone dies and appearances of the aliens who use the 4th dimension (time) to do away with death remind the reader of the relationship between life and death, and to note each death. The Dresden deaths, the death of Billy's wife and all the others along the way are mentioned as a sign of mourning that loss. 
 This is an anti-war book. The senseless destruction of war - of people, of homes, of ways of life are conveyed through an underlying sadness in the book. It also spoke to that generation of soldiers who came home and didn't talk about their experiences. Billy's family didn't know the details and perhaps didn't care to know (though his wife asked about the war). Billy dealt with his pain through time travel and trips to an alien world. On one hand, it's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit; on the other hand, it's a sad commentary on mental health care! 
 It is not only a wonderful book, but it grabbed me emotionally and wrung my heart.