I am first and foremost a military spouse. I’ve been married to this insanely
hot Apache pilot for the last 14 years, and between our six kids, four duty
stations, and juggling both our careers, there’s still nothing harder than the
days I kiss him goodbye and send him to war.
I’ve sent him a total of four times. Twice to Iraq and twice to Afghanistan.
Iraq almost didn’t give him back. I’m still picking pieces of that country out
of him, and probably always will.
As a military brat, I wrote FULL MEASURES, the first
book in the Flight &
Glory series, asking the question, “if my father had been killed in action
when I was twenty, how would that have affected my outlook on love? On risk? On
the military?”
In HALLOWED GROUND, the
fourth and final book in the Flight & Glory series,
I go back to Josh and Ember, and put their love and lives to the ultimate test
by sending Josh to Afghanistan.
But how do you keep your hero and heroine connected when they’re on different
continents, different time zones and different mindsets? The same way we
military spouses do: Skype, love letters, and longing thoughts. Is it
challenging? Absolutely, but the payoff is so worth it.
How do you make it realistic? By being brutally honest, raw, and unafraid to
look at war through the eyes of love, to explore the ugliness of deployment and
the beauty of homecoming. So I put what I knew of deployment into Hallowed
Ground, the times I was scared, the times I missed him so much that I wasn’t
sure I could breathe, the times I wanted to crawl through the computer screen
just to steal a kiss from my husband. And for what I didn’t know…well, I went to
the expert. My husband patiently answered every question I had, whether it was
on living conditions, feelings, or radio chatter while flying. There’s no way
that Hallowed Ground would be what it is if he hadn’t lent me his brain to pick.
It’s been two years since my husband returned from his last deployment and we
know another looms. Funny that in those two years he’s been home, I will have
published the entire Flight
& Glory series. Kind of fitting really, that while the first is about
healing from the trauma a deployment can bring, the fourth rips open that same
wound. But that’s the reality we live with as military spouses—our lives are
cycles of waiting for them to come home, then waiting for them to go again.
When it comes to sending a hero to war, I hope I got it right. I hope that if
you’ve never sent the man you love to war, that you’ll read HALLOWED GROUND and come
out with a peek at military love. If you’re like me—a military spouse—I hope
your reaction is a simple head nod.
Because just like a romance novel, our lives aren’t always easy, but holding
these men we love? That’s the happily ever after we fight for.
Rebecca Yarros is a hopeless romantic and lover of all things
chocolate, coffee, and Paleo. In addition to being a mom, military wife, and
blogger, she can never choose between Young Adult and New Adult fiction, so she
writes both. She’s a graduate of Troy University, where she studied European
history and English, but still holds out hope for an acceptance letter to
Hogwarts. Her blog, The Only Girl Among Boys, has been voted the Top Military
Mom Blog the last two years, and celebrates the complex issues surrounding the
military life she adores.
When she’s not writing, she’s tying on hockey skates for her kids, or
sneaking in some guitar time. She is madly in love with her army-aviator husband
of eleven years, and they’re currently stationed in Upstate NY with their gaggle
of rambunctious kiddos and snoring English Bulldog, but she would always rather
be home in Colorado.
There are some debts you can't repay...
Josh Walker is loyal,
reckless, and every girl's dream. But he only has eyes for December Howard, the
girl he has yearned for since his high school hockey days. Together they have
survived grief, the military, distance, and time as they've fought for stolen
weekends between his post at Ft. Rucker and her schooling at Vanderbilt. Now
that Josh is a medevac pilot and Ember is headed toward graduation, they're
moving on—and in—together.
Ember never wanted the Army life, but loving
Josh means accepting whatever the army dictates—even when that means saying
goodbye as Josh heads to Afghanistan, a country that nearly killed him once
before and that took her father. But filling their last days together with love,
passion, and plans for their future doesn't temper Ember's fear, and if there's
one thing she's learned from her father's death, it's that there are some
obstacles even love can't conquer.
Flight school is over.
This is
war.
I, too, wish to thank you for the sacrifices made. I lost my husband of 42+ years to Agent Orange from his service in Viet Nam. The longing to have him with me is incredible but needs must.
(Kathleen Bylsma 12:19pm January 30, 2016)
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