Purchase
The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War
Scribner
August 2014
On Sale: August 5, 2014
400 pages ISBN: 1451668104 EAN: 9781451668100 Kindle: B00GEECHA2 Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Biography
From an award-winning, “meticulously observant” (The New
Yorker), and “masterful” (Booklist) writer comes
a groundbreaking account of three women deployed to
Afghanistan and Iraq, and how their military service
affected their friendship, their personal lives, and their
families. America has been continuously at war since the fall of 2001.
This has been a matter of bitter political debate, of
course, but what is uncontestable is that a sizeable
percentage of American soldiers sent overseas in this era
have been women. The experience in the American military is,
it’s safe to say, quite different from that of men.
Surrounded and far outnumbered by men, imbedded in a male
culture, looked upon as both alien and desirable, women have
experiences of special interest. In Soldier Girls, Helen Thorpe follows the lives of
three women over twelve years on their paths to the
military, overseas to combat, and back home…and then
overseas again for two of them. These women, who are quite
different in every way, become friends, and we watch their
interaction and also what happens when they are separated.
We see their families, their lovers, their spouses, their
children. We see them work extremely hard, deal with the
attentions of men on base and in war zones, and struggle to
stay connected to their families back home. We see some of
them drink too much, have illicit affairs, and react to the
deaths of fellow soldiers. And we see what happens to one of
them when the truck she is driving hits an explosive in the
road, blowing it up. She survives, but her life may never be
the same again. Deeply reported, beautifully written, and powerfully moving,
Soldier Girls is truly groundbreaking.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|