Review: Can't Go Home Again

Merry Christmas!

I promised Ms. Cedar Sanderson that I would review Can’t Go Home Again*, and so here we are.

The format is going to be a bit different this time, but before I go on, allow me to say that any link marked with an asterisk IS an Amazon Affiliate link. If you purchase something through it, I receive a small commission for directing you to the site and the item which you may choose to purchase. Your personal information remains with you - I never know who bought what unless someone tells me. Amazon has your information; I never see it. Small comfort, I know, but….

Ahem. Without further ado, here is Can’t Go Home Again:

Men and women who lay their life on the line never escape unscathed, and when the time comes to return home, they find a wall between them, and loved ones. These tales follow those who gather the hope to begin healing, and tearing down the walls that have sprung up between them, and their loved ones. No one ever said it would be easy...

The authors’ main aim for this anthology is to offer bibliotherapy for veterans and those closest to them. The stories are meant to illustrate a “path for hope and healing” for those struggling with post-traumatic stress. Several veterans have already attested in reviews on Amazon that it has helped them, so you can treat my review as less of a confirmation and more of a “passing the good word” on to others.

I enjoyed these stories. Among the most notable to me is The Way the World Ends, a sci-fi/space opera story by Fiona Grey. What does a soldier do when duty is all he has, and politics continue to cost the lives of the men under his command? With no one to go back to and a duty that’s drowning him, there are a couple of unfortunate methods to make it all go away…

…but that’s not the ending our hero finds when he returns to the planet his government plans to abandon.

Denton Salle’s The Weight of the Past is a good primer for his Sworn to the Light* series. (I plan to read that, when I get the chance.) Set in a fantasy world that makes me think of a Dungeons and Dragons setting taken seriously, The Weight of the Past follows a soldier who saw his first love die on the battlefield. Now married and with a child on the way, he struggles to come to terms with the effects of his prior experiences and losses.

The Long Way Home is largely a flashback tale told from the POV of a Vietnam veteran and his second wife. It starts with a question from the woman’s brother: “Why don’t you get rid of [your husband] and find somebody who will take care of you?”

It’s a not uncommon thought in some circles but you won’t hear it said in so many words because it’s “not nice.” By which they mean they are thinking it, but they do not dare say any such thing in those specific words even to themselves, else they will be revealed to not be nice. And nice, to such people, means good.

Good is not nice, though it can and often does restrain itself. The heroine of The Long Way Home does not tell her brother to put his opinion where the sun does not shine. She does, however, think of a worthy counterargument: “Would you kick your spouse out because she was critically ill with cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or tuberculosis? Or who had dementia?”

Without intending to, The Long Way Home taps into the point I made about love here: It requires service and sacrifice from both parties. Sometimes, however, one party is called on to sacrifice more than the other when the other person’s health is in serious jeopardy. This is because the other person’s suffering is so acute, others can’t take care of them 24/7 - or wouldn’t want to deal with them until they were “all better.”

Getting better takes time, which The Long Way Home illustrates in its constantly switching narrative. If you love someone, you will stay by that person’s side until they are better because you care and the sacrifices are the price you pay for that concern and your love. It’s not a feeling - it’s a choice.

Speaking of choices, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is another good tale in the collection. What happens when a woman who was in the military and is now an EMT meets a man whose wife passed away a year ago? The people who own and run the Hallmark Channel should read this story - but they won’t. It would take the cardboard out of their films, and they need that in order to make them on the cheap. :author rolls eyes:

Christmas in the Mountains by William Lehman was also very enjoyable. And no, I’m not saying that just because the heroes are all lycanthropes (…though, yes, that did help a little - why are you looking at me like that?!). Waiting for a High Value Target they need to either kill or take alive, the group of misfit soldiers have been rotated out of the regular military due to their lycanthropy. It’s a fascinating story (with a sad part) that just so happens to occur at Christmas.

I have saved one of the stories I loved for last. This would be Christopher DiNote’s Tracking Santa which is the first tale in the anthology but the one I have reserved for the finale of this post. It is very much in the vein of A Christmas Carol* - and not just the one with Ebenezer Scrooge. We’re talking Matt Smith’s Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol* this time.

Tom is an Air Force veteran who had to punch out of his plane before it crashed. Now living in Florida, he’s on the NORAD detail for tracking Santa and updating all the little children who will call in asking about St. Nick’s progress on Christmas Eve. It is not a job Tom is looking forward to, in part because he is not looking forward to anything at all. Without the ability to fly, Tom has grown distant from the world - and from his wife and daughter.

This distance shows most notably when his little girl, Emmy, nearly rushes out in front of a truck. It is not Tom who dashes forward to pull her back - it is his wife, Maggie. Tom manages to back up his wife’s shaken scolding with his own, but not as much as he could have if he weren’t feeling so far away from the present. Taking his daughter to meet Santa after everything else that has happened to him just adds the cherry on top of his depression.

So imagine his surprise when he finds the Santa his daughter meets isn’t a local or someone hired for the night. Tom gets to go on a trip rather like the one George Bailey had in It’s A Wonderful Life* - whereupon he discovers again that it is, in fact, a wonderful life. With a little help from Ol’ St. Nick, of course. ;)

Can’t Go Home Again’s intended audience is veterans and those who love them. As far as I am concerned, that means that if you love veterans in even a general sense this book is for you as well. The authors handle the subject with a great deal more consideration and understanding than Hollywood has in decades. If you want a good idea of what post-traumatic stress is actually like, Can’t Go Home Again is a good place to learn about it.

But don’t take my word for it. Read the reviews on Amazon, then see if you can buy a copy of Can’t Go Home Again for the veteran in your life. If you want the book to receive further circulation, you can request your local library purchase it so that others can read it when they need it.

Give the gift that will keep on giving - pick up Can’t Go Home Again today, readers!