I just happened to pick this book up at the Library. I loved this book. Of course it had a bit of tragedy, you know I am a sucker for that, real life struggle but best of all(*spoiler*) it all ends well. Michael and Jolene's marriage is starting to unravel. But they must hold on for dear life when Jolene is deployed. Michael must be a single parent to their two girls. War changes Jolene and Michael. Now they must fight for everything that matters. "In the army, she'd found herself; in the air, she'd found her passion. But it wasn't until she met Michael that the missing part of her began slowly, cautiously to fill back in." "I don't love you anymore. Five words to change a world, to dissolve the ground beneath a woman's feet. It was a tidal wave, that sentence, whooshing in without warning, undermining foundations, leaving homes crumbled in the aftermath." Words are so powerful, they build up or destroy. How careless we are with them. "Here's what you need to know: some cliches are true, and war is definitely hell. It's being afraid all the time, and when you're not afraid it's because you're so pumped full of adrenaline you could literally burst. It's watching people who you love-really profoundly love-get blown to pieces right next to you. It's seeing a leg lying in the ditch and picking it up to put it in a bag because no man-or part of a man, your friend-can be left behind. It's the dark night of the soul, Michael. There's no front line over there. The war is all around them, every day, everywhere they go. Some handle it better than others. We don't know why, but we do know this: the human mind can't safely or healthily process that kind of carnage and uncertainty and horror. It just can't. No one comes back from war the same." Powerful words, powerful description. I believe it, no one comes back from war the same. How could they? "He'd lived with her, slept with her, and still somehow had forgotten the woman he'd married." We all take for granted to people we live with, the people we love, our families. They will always be there we say. We will hug them tomorrow, tell them that we love them later. But what if later doesn't come? Right now, right now is the moment we need to appreciate and show our family we love them. Right now. "We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." Oh those journeys, I so wish someone could walk it for me oftentimes. "Heroes. They are heroes, our soldiers, the men and women who go into harms way to protect us, our way of life. It doesn't matter what you think of the war, you have to be grateful to the warriors, of whom we ask so much. To whom we sometimes give too little. How do you help someone deal with horrors you can't imagine? And how does a soldier come home from war, really? As a nation, these are questions we need to ask ourselves." A really good read. I highly recommend. It makes me appreciate what our soldiers do, what they sacrifice, and their families. I think our nation needs to do so much more to help them when they come back from war. We do so much to prepare them for the war but they come back changed and unprepared.
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