An offbeat and inspiring tale of a vet trying to find a way to help himself.
In this memoir, debut author Voss and freelance writer Nguyen (175 Ways to Travel Today, 2014) tell the story of Voss’ epic journey to combat his PTSD.
In 2004, Voss was a scout attached to a Stryker infantry brigade, participating in hundreds of combat missions, security patrols, and other duties across Iraq. When he came home to Milwaukee after his 2006 honorable discharge, however, he was plagued by feelings of grief, shame, and guilt regarding things that he’d seen in the war zone, including the deaths of close friends. Then, in 2013, he received an invitation to visit a friend in California, 2,700 miles away, and he decided to do it in an unexpected way—on foot: “No cars, no support vehicles, no rides from anyone. Just my two feet, the open road, and the ghosts of the past who demanded to be dealt with.” A friend and fellow vet, Anthony Anderson, accompanied him, and for both men, the trip became a surprisingly proactive approach to dealing with trauma. As Voss made his way across the West, he encountered a variety of characters—including a filmmaker who occasionally documented the walk; a Native American healer, known as WolfWalker; and veterans of different generations and wars. Along the way, he somewhat unexpectedly found comfort in meditation. The authors tell Voss’ story in clear, conversational prose, as if Voss were casually speaking across a dinner table: “In Iowa we’d met a marine-turned-rancher-turned-pastor who told us that life demands a response. You can respond to trauma by curling in on yourself like a wilting plant, or you can respond by taking action to face the pain and move through it. That sounded good, but I was taking action.” Overall, the book is an engaging mix of war story, travelogue, and motivational memoir, presenting the trials of a man with roiling emotions but no clear method of releasing them. As the journey goes on, his book becomes an unlikely look at the pain of everyday people in contemporary America, and particularly that of forgotten soldiers of forgotten wars.
An offbeat and inspiring tale of a vet trying to find a way to help himself.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60868-599-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: New World Library
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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