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MWSA Review
Home of the Brave is a brave book. It tells so many stories of recent wars in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East. Although the stories are fiction, many by very talented writers, you simply had to have been there in some fashion or the other to be able to tell such stories. Many scenes were riveting to my mind’s eye, and my senses of smell and hearing were strangely titillated as I read of things so far away from my little world. And then there were times when my heart was warmed and comforted as I read of camaraderie, friendship, respect, and love of country, home, and family. This book will bring you to the depths of hate for war, and then return you to the reality of the need for those who will sign a blank check to Uncle Sam for any amount up to and including their life, if that is what it takes. In the introduction, Jeffery Hess says he hopes readers will identify, be entertained, challenged, caught off guard, moved, and enlightened. For me, Home of the Brave was all of those things.
Reviewed by: Fran McGraw (2014)
Author's Synopsis
As editor Jeffrey Hess states in his introduction, "Home of the Brave implies the American military. Somewhere in the Sand implies the desert conditions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the mental state that the returning service members occupy periodically or perpetually once they return home." These twenty-two works of fiction tell those stories and allow the reader to experience war, and peace (if it can be found) after war, from both perspectives.