Its love
and war!
If
I don't tell the story now, no one else will be able to tell it for us. Some people believe in fate, that no matter
where you are in the world your soul mate will find you, or you them. I have to believe that fate wouldn't be as
cruel as it seems to me now.
~Junie
In a war
torn Afghanistan, Junie signs up for a Peace Corps assignment involving
recently orphaned children. She wasn't
expecting a lavish experience. She knew
it would be primitive and dangerous but it turned out to be way more difficult
than she could have imagined.
Captain
Tyler Alexander, U.S. Army, Infantry: Mission first and mission ready is his
motto, but he realizes it all has a deeper meaning when he meets Junie--a
Flower-power Peace Corps volunteer. Can
they have a relationship in the midst of terrorists and firefights?
I dart my eyes around as panic builds in my
chest. What happened? The
familiar loneliness builds and builds as I try to recall the last things I
remember. My eyes shut tight against the
memories. The emotions of fear,
vulnerability, and despair sit at the surface— a war inside me. Heat crawled in
and wouldn’t leave, keeping me on the edge of combusting. The onslaught of images raged in me with the
faces of our captors, horribly disfigured with holes in their skulls, it
replayed over and over.
~Junie, Shrapnel’s Kiss
Blindly,
I rummage in the bag for a bottle of water. Cradling her head with my arm, I
lift her and pour water into her mouth. Through coughing and sputtering she
only gets a little bit. I rearrange her
attempting to make her more comfortable by putting her head in my lap. A deep fear rolls its way up from my empty
stomach. The granola bars we had earlier barely touched the surface of my
hunger. In training, there were days when they only gave us one MRE and worked
us hard. It was to prepare us times like
these. I never had any training that
used this scenario, lost in the wilderness of Afghanistan with a female
civilian sick with fever.
~Tyler,
Shrapnel’s Kiss
Amy Rachiele is a military spouse and brat who
spent many years volunteering and on staff for the Army National Guard and
Department of Veteran Affairs with family support, family readiness, as well
as, families of the Fallen. Amy devoted 10 years to teaching at-risk
students in the Providence School System. She holds a Master's degree
from Rhode Island College in English and Secondary Education. She volunteers
her time at the local library facilitating a writer’s group in the hope of
inspiring other writers. Besides writing, she enjoys scrapbooking,
sewing, and traveling. Amy lives in Massachusetts with her son and
husband.
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