Dive into a great book!

I've been reading a fair bit lately, and I just added a few new books to my LibraryThing library. I wanted to call special attention to one book in particular: High Dive by Tammar Stein.

The author (Tammy, to me) is a good friend from our days together in San Antonio, and I have been waiting for this book to come out ever since I finished reading her first book. I had the privilege of reading High Dive during various stages of the writing process, and finally holding the hardbound copy in my hands is just so exciting!

I remember thinking back when I read Tammy's first book, Light Years, that she has a special gift for writing about places in a way that bring them alive for the reader. That was certainly true of Charlottesville, VA, in Light Years and remains equally true for Paris and Florence in High Dive. If she can paint such a true picture of these cities that I know personally, then I can trust that her treatment of Israel (in Light Years) and the island of Sardinia (in High Dive) is equally realistic, and I can lose myself in the enjoyment of feeling like I am visiting these foreign places myself.

In High Dive, Arden Vogel is on her way to Sardinia to prepare the family's vacation home for sale. Arden is coping with the death of her father a couple of years earlier and the current deployment of her Army nurse mother to Iraq. Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, she makes an impetuous decision to join 3 new friends from Texas and take a detour through Paris and Florence. Along the way, Arden remembers her family's time together in Germany (the last duty station where they were all together), worries about her mother's safety, and longs for what might have been with her friend Peter.

The deployment angle rang especially true to me. This book is not against the war in Iraq; it's not in favor of it either. It simply deals with the war for what it is to thousands of military families: a fact of life. Take this passage, for example, which takes place in Florence after a falling out with one of Arden's new friends:

I missed my mother. I was beyond tired, not just from not sleeping last night, but bone tired, soul tired. Tired of worrying about my mom all the damn time. Tired of missing my dad. Tired of what felt like an endless climb up a steep mountain. Would I ever get to the top and be able to rest?

That passage really gets to me, because I know that feeling too well; Tammy captures it perfectly throughout the book.

On the back flap of the cover, Tammy says:

I was an army spouse for 6 years and my husband and I still have many friends in the service. But few of our civilian friends have any connection to the war in Iraq or the sacrifices our troops and their families make. I wanted to write a book that would create, at least in fiction, someone who is deeply affected by the war for readers to get to know. Arden and her mom might not be real, but there are many military families a lot like them, who are lonely and under almost unbearable strain.

This book is a valentine for military families. I recommend it to my civilian friends for a look at life inside the tent and to my military friends for a deeply moving treatment of something that is indeed just a fact of life for us.

And, Tammy, I can't wait for your next book! You rock!!