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That’s How It Was by Hazel Pacheco
Best described as slyly funny and heart-warming, That’s How It Was: Operation Finders Keepers is uniquely written in letter format. Written from a ten-year-old boy’s perspective, Randy Ray’s letters prove to be captured moments in time just waiting to be discovered by his daughters thirty-seven years later. These treasured memories allow his daughters to get to know the boy who became their father.
That’s How It Was by Hazel Pacheco
Best described as slyly funny and heart-warming, That’s How It Was: Operation Finders Keepers is uniquely written in letter format. Written from a ten-year-old boy’s perspective, Randy Ray’s letters prove to be captured moments in time just waiting to be discovered by his daughters thirty-seven years later. These treasured memories allow his daughters to get to know the boy who became their father.
Mayhem 337: Memoir of a Combat Advisor in Afghanistan by Chad Rickard
In 2008, Senior U.S. Army Infantry Sergeant Chad Rickard embedded within the Afghan Army as a Combat Advisor. During a yearlong deployment, he slugged it out with Haqqani Taliban on Afghanistan’s eastern border, along Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier. Follow Rickard as he engages in mountain warfare against numerically superior enemy forces. See urban combat through the eyes of a Soldier that was there. Follow along as his team directs airstrikes and artillery fire. From hostage situations, to IEDs, and air assaults, this memoir leaves nothing to the imagination. Don’t miss this award-winning book and author.
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Wheels of Injustice by Susan Louise Gabriel
It began with one woman’s fight to save her child and ended in a national movement—
Six weeks into a blissful honeymoon, life turns into a nightmare when Susan’s 9-year-old daughter is taken away and her husband is falsely accused of child sexual abuse.
A simple misunderstanding is reshaped by the powerful, out-of-control child protection machine of the 1980s into something sinister, and Susan is dragged under its churning wheels. She is given the choice to cooperate in prosecuting her innocent husband or lose her daughter.
It’s the decade of unfounded abuse accusations, hysterical claims of orgies at daycare centers, families controlled by courts, and a child protection system that has become the very thing it was created to eradicate.
No one wants to hear the facts.
No one wants to know the truth.
When the couple doesn’t cave to the pressure, Susan loses custody of her daughter, and her husband is charged with a felony that carries a 16-year prison sentence.
Wheels of Injustice is a curtains-pulled-back, true account of the child protection system of the ’80s and its victims, who risked everything to expose its egregiously unjust acts and reform it.
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This memoir is a tribute to God’s faithfulness and a message of hope and inspiration to others who struggle to overcome adversity, fight injustice, or turn an upended life the right way around again.
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All Is Not LOST by Shannon Kenny Carbonell
All Is Not LOST is the story of what happened when one woman set aside a lifelong dream in favor of her kids, only to find herself battling her own ego and unfulfilled ambition. Shannon Kenny Carbonell — wife of actor Nestor Carbonell of LOST, Bates Motel, and The Morning Show fame — knew she was making the better choice for her, no matter how painful, when she decided on full-time motherhood over career. Little did Shannon know she would soon find herself desperate to feed the part of her that was suddenly starved of creativity and accomplishment.
When she found out her family would be relocating to Oahu, Hawaii, while Nestor shot LOST, Shannon helped uproot their lives with as much true love and support as she could muster, thinking, ”I’ll just have to be lost in the midst of LOST.” But not long after the move, a torturous family fight revealed the burden of her loss was also weighing upon those closest to her. Just like the LOST survivors, she had crashed on an island that would test her, heal her, and surround her with the people who would eventually show her the way home.
With a no-holds-barred honesty that is raw, sometimes heartbreaking, and often hysterical, former working actress Shannon Kenny Carbonell tells her tale of attempting to reconcile her growing feelings of failure and sudden loss of her identity. This is her journey.
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