post-traumatic stress disorder

“To those trained in Explosive Ordinance Disposal, the last-resort tactic for defusing bombs is known as the Long Walk: a soldier dealing with the device up close, alone, with no margin for error.” Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit in Iraq where he earned a Bronze Star. He speaks with candor about the excruciating trauma of war, the daily battles against a constant and unknown hidden danger, the likelihood of death around every corner, and finally his return home to his wife and family.

I've been sitting on this review for months, unable to express my feelings for this movie. I watched all of the originals, I remember when Max was a cop, I know who runs Bartertown, and I was incredibly leery of rebooting an old property like that. Except this isn't a reboot. It's just a story in the mythology of a man named Max in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. And it is, start to finish, incredible.

I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to read this masterful literary homage. I'm not the only one who sees the connection. Margaret Wappler writes in the October 23, 2015 issue of the New York Times Book Review: "King’s devotion to a passionately experimental style, in a genre often beholden to formula, is inspiring. Kurt Vonnegut might have written a book like this, if he had ever been cyber-bullied on Facebook."

Just as powerful as Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds, The Farther Shore is the story of what happens to our military men and women when we send them to hostile countries for reasons no one really understands.

Thank You For Your Service by David Finkel is a deeply moving look at the wounded bodies and scarred psyches of the men who return home after modern-day combat. In the author’s previous book, The Good Soldiers, he was embedded with soldiers during the surge of deployments in 2007-08. Now, he’s following them home to record their struggles with finding and keeping jobs, post-traumatic stress disorder, and rehabilitating their wounds. Without inserting himself into the story

When Haley calls home and no one answers the phone by the 2nd ring, she is figures her dad is sleeping. When no one picks up by the 10th ring, she hopes he is mowing the lawn. When no one picks up by the 20th, she knows something is wrong. Something is horribly wrong. She begs a ride from Finn, the editor of the school newspaper who has been nagging her to write for him. But the car is too small, Finn drives to slow, and something is wrong at home. Haley can't breathe, she can't think, she needs out!