Download Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War

Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War Hardcover

Author: Visit Amazon's Kayla Williams Page | Language: English | ISBN: 0393239365 | Format: PDF, EPUB

Description
Book Details
Table of Contents
Reviews

Download Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War
Posts about Download The Book Download Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In October 2003, Brian McGough, “a soldier’s soldier,” was hit in the head by an IED (improvised explosive device) in Iraq. Shrapnel entered McGough’s helmet behind his ear, “tearing through the scalp and skull.” Sergeant Kayla Williams of the 101st Airborne Division, author of Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army (2005), met McGough while also serving in Iraq. After McGough returned stateside, they married. Awarded a Purple Heart, McGough was released from Walter Reed and sent back to duty even though he still had a hole in the back of his skull and was clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In this searing and brutally honest memoir, Williams chronicles all that McGough suffered at the hands of his own government and the subsequent long road to recovery. Indeed, Williams’ anger is palpable and justified. “The government that was responsible for sending Brian off to war wasn’t going to take care of us—we had to take care of ourselves.” This is an important book for returning veterans trying to cope with civilian life and those suffering from a traumatic brain injury as well as their loved ones. And it should be required reading for everyone in health care and government agencies. --June Sawyers

Review

“Kayla Williams’s intimate and honest portrayal of marriage after the tragedy of war is a must-read for military spouses, caregivers, and anyone hoping to gain an understanding of the challenges faced by soldiers coming home. Kayla and Brian’s perseverance is a tribute to the power of the human spirit to not only survive but to thrive.” (Marie Tillman, author of The Letter: My Journey Through Love, Loss & Life and founder of the Pat Tillman Foundation)

“If you think you know the meaning of the word sacrifice, when you read Kayla Williams’s masterful memoir Plenty of Time When We Get Home you will come away with a whole new appreciation for the incredible people who serve our country. Part heartache, hard truth, love story, and an insider’s look at the back end of war, this book offers us a look behind the uniforms and the parades and into the damage of war’s wounds. In the end, it is a story about how love can ultimately heal.” (Lee Woodruff, author of In an Instant and Those We Love Most)

“In her second book, Plenty of Time When We Get Home, Kayla Williams’s raw, honest, and take-no-prisoners prose gives service members and families scarred by war the greatest gift of all—hope.” (Tanya Biank, author of Lifetime TV’s Army Wives and Undaunted: The Real Story of America’s Servicewomen in Today’s Military)

“Ruthlessly raw and objective.” (Publishers Weekly)

“A reminder that the best books… impart a sense of shared experience, and to read them is to participate in humanity.” (Gregg LaGambina, author of The A.V. Club)

See all Editorial Reviews

Direct download links available for Download Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (February 10, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0393239365
ISBN-13: 978-0393239362
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

When I read Kayla Williams first book ("Love My Rifle More than You") some seven years ago I didn't really like it because I didn't think the story had attained necessary perspective. Reading this book, and seeing some of the maelstrom that was going on around her during the leadup to that book's publication, I can see why - like the line goes, "you can't have PTSD if you're not post-anything yet."

In this deeper account, Williams has earned at least some of that perspective. She can now relate her story with a decade of fairly hard-won experiences, of marriage, motherhood, dealing with her own post-war trauma, and the lingering effects of her husband's brain injury (suffered in Iraq), which is the focal point of most of the book.

As the Iraq War fades from memory, its easy to focus on "heroic" narratives like "Lone Survivor" (which took place in Afghanistan). Conventional combat stories are often easy to read, with clearly defined beginning, middle and ends - familiar characters and standard plot lines. That's not how real life works - the "plenty of time" that Kayla's title describes if full of problems, ups and downs, and constant challenges.

Williams herself isn't the most pleasant narrator, and can be full of herself and self-pitying in the same sentences. She oversimplifies and generalizes. She uses ad hominem attacks against the civilians who she feels don't appreciate the effort of veterans. Her writing style is harsh and blunt, and this is not the kind of memoir that's been crafted sentence-by-sentence in a college workshop class. But, that's an honest portrayal of most veterans - especially the female veterans who she correctly points out often don't get the same credit or attention that male soldiers do.

Kayla Williams's first book, Love My Rifle More Than You, was an alternately engaging and infuriating but always eye-opening first-person perspective of a woman serving during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her second book, Plenty Of Time When We Get Home, a sequel of sorts, follows her story upon her return home. With bitter irony, it was here, in suburban America, as far from the front lines as possible, that her trials truly began.

During the course of her deployment in Iraq, Williams met, and shared a mutual attraction with, Sergeant Brian McGough. The first pages of the book recreate in graphic detail the ambush McGough was caught up in after returning from a leave he didn't want to a war he didn't believe in. The ambush left McGough critically wounded with traumatic brain injuries. A decorated veteran, his combat tour was abruptly over. Williams reconnected with him when she returned to the U.S., but his offhand remark while they were both in Iraq - that they could put off consummating their relationship because there was "plenty of time when we get home" - would prove almost fatally optimistic.

Williams leads us deeper into her nightmare of being married to a man who cannot adjust to civilian life - not just because of the shock of transition that all veterans face, or the PTSD that so many experience, but because of the lack of attention paid by an unfeeling and unresponsive system to the needs of a physically and mentally impaired individual who desperately needed intensive assistance. Instead of being welcomed home as a hero, a brave soldier and loyal patriot was essentially left to his own devices or, worse, channeled into irrelevant or even counter-productive treatments.

Book Preview

Download Plenty of Time When We Get Home: Love and Recovery in the Aftermath of War Download

Please Wait...