This excellent social and military history is essentially a triple biography of three women soldiers of different ages, races and backgrounds who served together in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first few years after 9/11.
All three were members of the Indiana National Guard, who had joined for very different reasons, but none with an expectation that they would ever end up in a combat zone. Then 9/11 happened, and they were each pulled into the vortex of multiple deployments punctuated by strange intervening returns to normal life.
The author interviewed all three soldiers extensively, as well as many of their fellow soldiers, family and friends. Their personal lives and experiences, most intimate thoughts and relationships were revealed and interwoven, in order to show how they were changed in ways both positive and negative by their time spent together, as part of a mixed-sex unit at war during several deployments in both the Afghanistan and Iraqi war zones.
An absorbing, moving and complex tale of loves and friendships gained and lost, unexpected skills and abilities developed, maturity and wisdom acquired through trauma and suffering, and the powerful bonds forged among people sharing common dangers and adversity. Recommended.
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