At first, the man who became the author’s stepfather “sang songs and smiled with his eyes,” but he soon revealed himself to be abusive and controlling. Her father's alcoholism and volcanic temper eventually drove Harjo's mother and her children out of the family home.

She came into the world as an already-living spirit with the goal to release “the voices, songs, and stories” she carried with her from the “ancestor realm.” On Earth, she was the daughter of a half-Cherokee mother and a Creek father who made their home in Tulsa, Okla. Romesha ably captures the daily dangers faced by these courageous American soldiers in Afghanistan.Ī lyrical, soul-stirring memoir about how an acclaimed Native American poet and musician came to embrace “the spirit of poetry.”įor Harjo, life did not begin at birth. The book is riveting in its authentic detail, right down to the determined attempts to recover American bodies before the Taliban could.

When the assault came at dawn, the soldiers took up their weapons and positions dutifully and with fervor, though they were stunningly outnumbered and nearly overrun until air support arrived hours later. Romesha lovingly describes this cohort as “exceptionally ordinary men who were put to an extraordinary test.” The author devotes the narrative to building character studies of his troop, which he carefully “stacked” with the most determined, steely, physically fit, and battle-tested soldiers, headed by the very capable Lt. It was the spectacularly ill-planned layout of the fort-“so breathtakingly open to plunging fire that massive amounts of artillery and airpower would be required to defend it”-that allowed the Taliban to observe in detail the movements and patterns of the American scouts, young men who were trained in reconnaissance, countersurveillance, and navigation. The location of the fort defied tactical logic: rather than firing down at the enemy from the top of the hill, Keating was a target at the base of steep mountains whose ridgelines concealed attack points behind thick trees and boulders.

Having joined the Army from his graduating class in Lake City, California, in 1999, following his two older brothers, Romesha became a commander of the Black Knight Troop’s Red Platoon, which was eventually sent to the most remote and dangerous outpost in Nuristan, less than 20 miles from the Pakistan border. However, as Romesha notes in his character-driven narrative, it was hardly a surprise enemy move. The attack by the Taliban on Keating took the lives of eight Americans and countless Afghans, and it rendered numerous wounded. An account of the horrendous October 2009 attack on the American Combat Outpost Keating in Afghanistan, told in a frank, engaging vernacular by the staff sergeant and Medal of Honor winner.

Romesha book