I recently chose this book as my book club selection for January. I heard about it on Morning Joe on MSNBC. Now, if you know me, you're probably thinking, "What in the WORLD were you watching MSNBC for???" I'm a Fox News girl through and through. I took some friendly advice to give this show a try from a friend who watches it. It was fine. And I actually met Joe Scarborogh when I was working at a restaurant in Pensacola, FL and he was very friendly. So I was watching and they had this author on and they were discussing the book and read a few excerpts. I immediately added it to my TBR (to be read) list. The author, Kevin Powers, is an Iraq War Vet and the book is a fiction novel that follows two soldiers through a war. And wow, it was powerful. Very brutal...we're talking about war here....so there were some hard parts to get through. And it jumps around a bit, so I had to get used to that. But what captivated me so much was the way that the author wrote it. He's a very good writer. The words he used and the way he wrote it was almost....poetic. That's pretty talented when you're writing a book about a war situation. While this is a fiction novel, with the author being a vet and going through a tour in a hostile country, I'm assuming that some of these experiences are things that he actually experienced somehow.
I also wanted to choose this book because my book club is made up of military spouses in my husband's group. I wanted to see how they reacted to it, being wives of soldiers. I got some mixed reactions. Some really like it, some found it hard to read. Everyone appreciated it, and we all were affected by it somehow. In our husband's career field, they are lucky to not be on the front-lines, the way the characters in this book are. But they do deploy and it is a hostile environment and can be scary at times. I do recommend it if you can read this type of topic. It's powerful and really shows you what can happen in war-time situations.
