In the early summer of 2008, a decorated veteran left his Virginia home and headed south, driving towards his older brother to spend a handful of alcohol-fueled days in New Orleans. Marine Staff Sergeant Travis Twiggs, 36, had served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. His brother Willard, once a maritime-logistics specialist, had worked construction since the hard days after Hurricane Katrina. Though two years older, Willard looked up to Travis, idolizing him as a kind of warrior hero, a real-life Rambo. Together they formed a unit, and from Louisiana they headed west, disappearing amid the yawning chasms of the Mojave Desert.

When they reemerged days later in Arizona, they had just wrecked their car trying to jump the rim of the Grand Canyon. The saga came to a tragic end 48 hours later - a murder/suicide, a stolen Dodge Durango and a desolate stretch of Arizona highway.

The story of Staff Sergeant Twiggs, whose life plunged into darkness after two soldiers under his command were killed in Iraq, is one of mental illness, love and devotion- a veteran’s war within. A soldier’s duty to protect his unit is often an impossible burden. When that duty breaks down, trust often becomes the first casualty with blame and guilt debilitating. In some ways, that is the core of PTSD- a breakdown of social trust. Twiggs blamed himself for the soldiers’ deaths, and trust ceased to be a currency given or received except to Willard, the brother who would follow Travis into the depths of his unraveling. And yet that trust, the unit of two they formed as they disappeared into the desert, may have been the source of their downfall.

The Irritable Heart is their story: service mingled with sacrifice, the bonds of brotherhood strained to their breaking point and the mysterious final days culminating in a surreal tragedy.