“…grief that tears everything down. Pain that transports you to an entirely different universe, even while everyone else thinks nothing has really changed.”

In this powerful debut memoir, Nancy B. Ronquillo explores the brutal legacy of the Global War on Terror through the eyes of one soldier, one mother, and one family. When her young paratrooper son returns from Iraq with a dusty bag of disposable cameras in his duffel, no one foresees the tragedy to come. Consumed by shattering loss, Ms Ronquillo embarks on a courageous quest to uncover the truths behind her son’s death.
Her journey becomes a profound reckoning with war’s invisible wounds, the psychological, emotional, and generational scars that endure long after the fighting ends. With raw honesty, she confronts family premonitions, buried secrets, and the pull of military service across generations, while navigating grief, resilience, and the mystery of choosing life again.
As she reflects on the pain of loss: grief that tears everything down, a pain that transports you to an entirely different universe even while the world around you seems unchanged.
It’s a heartbreaking yet hopeful tribute that illuminates the hidden costs of war on military families and offers a path toward healing and understanding.

**I would like to express my gratitude to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Nancy Ronquillo provides us an almost grief journal esque memoir. In it she explores her own grief of the death of her son and the impacts that the war in Iraq had on him. In this she explores her emotions through a couple year period. Overall this was an interesting and solid book, even though I was expecting something a little different.

I received a free advanced copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.