This is one of my Book of the Month selections and I was happy that I got it, although my next read is definitely going to be a lighter one!
Barely out of her teens, Kate Fugett married Clive, her high school sweetheart, on a complete whim. Did she believe she loved him? Yes, I think so. But she was also homeless, jobless and living in her car when she met him. Marriage to Clive provided a degree of security that she wasn't experiencing at the time that she married him. Clive was in the military so marriage meant that she could be put on to his health plan and have a place to live. Cleve was soon deployed for a second time. He didn't come home in one piece - he came home with an injured leg, that soon was amputated. All of the tenuous stability that Fugett had managed to cobble together fell apart. She became a wounded warrior's caregiver - something that the military convinced her was so essential, that she gave up caring for herself and her own needs.
This was a powerful and impactful read that I could only take in small pieces - the great part of this memoir is that Fugett did break the chapters into short pieces. She struggled to deal with PTSD, physical healing, opioids and addiction and worse. She describes how she had to learn about paperwork and other things on the fly because she was so young and literally had no experience. It was emotional, vulnerable, illuminating and a necessary memoir about the state of the military and how it handles not only it's wounded warriors but the people closest to them that have to care for them. She is resilient and strong and I admire her.
A must read and a definitely necessary addition to your library. Brava!
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