Fire in the Night: Creative Essays from an Iraq War Vet

by Lee Kelley
Published by (date): Create Space (2008)
ISBN: 1438235488
Price: 12.99
Tags: Non-Fiction Iraq/Afghanistan

Synopsis:

Former Army Captain Lee Kelley began a military blog while he was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in 2005-2006. The blog is called "Wordsmith at War," and uses a personal essay style to illustrate the sights and sounds of one soldier in the Iraq war. Lee has been asked to write for the New York Times on multiple occasions and even been profiled in Time Magazine's "People of the Year" (Dec. 18th, 2006 issue). Additionally, his work has been utilized in classroom environments, in a dramatic performance, on National Public Radio, and he's been published in five anthologies to date.
    
Here are 53 of his most popular essays, all adapted from the 400 pages of material he wrote about his experiences in Iraq.  The cumulative effect of this collection is a journey from the beginning of a deployment as a married man, to coming home and re-adjusting to life as a single dad. And yet each essay can stand alone. The varying moods and topics within the book are a direct reflection of his time in Iraq, where each day brought with it a new adversity, a new chance to find his inner strength and seek out the positive.  While Lee's story and voice are unique, the feelings and experiences he writes about are emblematic of countless American soldiers involved in this war, and therefore of a generation.

He reaches across generations, politics, and culture to create empathy in alien hearts.
 
Lesser writers might say, “While I was deployed, I was homesick.”  Kelley’s thoughts of home are more delicate and he presents them as water-colored prose poems.  “When my tour is over,” he says, “just drop me off on any Arizona or Utah highway, where the Buttes and the Red Rock Canyons create optical illusions in the distance and across the horizon – I’ll walk home.”   Later in the book, he writes a whimsical letter to a Cryogenic Firm about freezing his body and then awakening him in the midst of some extraordinary circumstance.  For  example, “Push a button. I’m standing on the highest point on the Planet, Mt. Everest, stretching my arms upwards to the sky, filled with wonder at the richness of life.”  Such images, coming from a soldier serving in the harsh climes of war-torn Iraq, fills the reader with hope.
 
For all the loveliness of Kelley’s writing, the cover is a simple collage. A medal fills the left top corner, draped dramatically over the silhouette of a soldier prepares the reader for something warlike and unusual – but nothing really prepares the casual browser for the creativity inside. 
 
FIRE IN THE NIGHT is the kind of book that can be read in one sitting. Kelley’s Iraqi interlude lasted 544 days.  During that time, he experienced the country viscerally.  It can’t be described in a review, only the authors’ own words will do.  “The dust there is instant chocolate pudding – just add water.”  “These men see the night through thermal imaging scopes – and night vision goggles.  Electric green and red are the colors they become familiar with.  They can see a mouse running in a field at 100 meters…”  “The next morning, the sun looked just like a song…”

At the end of one of the last essays “Squint”, the author issues a challenge to the reader, “My time in Iraq changed me in countless ways. And perspective is such a fleeting and mutable thing. For example, I’ve tried to give you some kind of glimpse here, but sight and thoughts can shift so quickly, like right now and you sit reading these words. Just squint. See it?”

A MUST READ!

Review by Joyce Faulkner, MWSA President & Reviewer (August 2009)

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Phone: (435) 272 4618. Email: lee@desertsunwriting.com