Click on cover image to purchase a copy
MWSA Review
This book begins with a red flag when Heather’s fiancé Tristin announces that he is going to join the military two months before their wedding. He didn’t ask her what she thought about it, and she put her own plans on hold to support him by being the perfect military wife. They did decide together on his first duty station in Pensacola, Florida.
Heather continued her education as Tristin settled into his career as a naval officer. They both adjusted to military life and decided to have a child. Six months after their son was born, Tristin deployed to Iraq. After Tristin returned, the marriage started going downhill. The family relocated to Japan and added a daughter. Before they moved to their next duty station in Virginia Beach, they started talking about divorce. Even though their marriage continued to deteriorate, they stayed together for another three years.
It was in Virginia that Heather began expanding her life beyond the role of wife and mother. She became a serious runner and started writing. Eventually, she found the strength to leave and restart her life as a single mother.
This is a good book to read to learn about life as a military spouse. Also, it can serve as a road map for anyone who needs inspiration to get out of a relationship that isn’t working and rebuild a fulfilling life for themselves and their family.
Review by Eva Nevarez St John
Author's Synopsis
Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage is about a woman’s journey from being overshadowed by her husband’s military career to rediscovering her identity as a single mother entering a new stage in life. The memoir explores how, like many military spouses, she camouflaged her identity, conforming to the expected role of the supportive wife who was secondary to her husband’s career as a Navy officer. But after she ended her thirteen-year marriage in her late thirties, she set out on a quest to figure out who she was as a woman without her husband, discovering that the hardships of military life—the forced independence, frequent loneliness, required adaptability, and fierce resilience—had trained her for life after divorce.
Format(s) for review: Paper or Kindle
Review genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography
Pages/Word count: 294 / 79,000