Blog Tour: PLAYING ARMY by Nancy Stroer
PLAYING ARMY
Nancy Stroer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: UpLit / domestic war
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
It’s1995 and the Army units of Fort Stewart, Georgia are gearing up to deploy toBosnia, but Lieutenant Minerva Mills has no intention of going to war-torneastern Europe. Her father disappeared in Vietnam and, desperate for some kindof connection to him, she’s determinedto go on a long-promised tour to Asia. But the Colonel will only release her ontwo conditions—that she reform the rag-tag Headquarters Company so they’reready for the peacekeeping mission, and that she get her weight within Armyregs, whichever comes second. Min only has one summer to kick everyone’s buttsinto shape but the harder she plays Army, the more the soldiers—and herbody—rebel. If she can’t even get the other women on her side, much less losethose eight lousy pounds, she’ll never have another chance to stand where herfather once stood in Vietnam, feeling what he felt. The Colonel may sweep heralong to Bosnia or throw her out of the Army altogether. Can you fake it untilyou make it? Min is about to find out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ExcerptThree:
I turned to look, but before I could see, before I couldprocess what was happening, brakes squealed and treads strained against theirforward trajectory. A tracked vehicle did not turn on a dime when hemmed in bytrees. Washburn had climbed into the passenger side of my Humvee to get on theradio and his helmet and Reyes’s—awake now and likewise silhouetted against thebrightness—were turned toward an armored personnel carrier that burst frombetween the trees straight at them.
Bright lights made a fuzzy arc in the smoke, then the APCplowed into the vinyl side of the Humvee. There was a sickening crunch, thesound of armor hitting the thin, metal-framed doors. The Humvee lurched forwardinto the back corner of the deuce, pushed by the much larger vehicle. The deucemoved, too, then halted the Humvee’s momentum.
I froze. It took a full five seconds for the cicadas torecover, to begin screaming into the night, although an engine fan was stillrunning somewhere. Those five seconds were so dense I could hear the Browniannoise of molecules struggling for space. Then someone was screaming in alanguage I didn’t know. Maybe Reyes? Screaming in Tagalog? Robinson emergedfrom the cab of the deuce and stumbled toward me on the trail but I motionedher back. “Lay on the horn,” I said. “Fuck light and noise discipline. Turn onthe headlights and don’t stop blasting the horn until somebody turns up.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Nancy Stroer grew up in a very big family in a very smallhouse in Athens, Georgia and served in the beer-soaked trenches of post-ColdWar Germany. She holds degrees from Cornell and Boston University, and her workhas appeared in the Stars and Stripes, Soldiers magazine, Hallaren Lit Mag,Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Things We Carry Still, an anthology of military writingfrom Middle West Press.
She’s a teacher and a trainer, and an adjunct faculty memberof the Ellyn Satter Institute, a 503(c) not-for-profit that helps individualsand families develop a more joyful relationship to food and their bodies.Playing Army is her first novel.
Social media links:
https://twitter.com/Nancy_Stroer
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/49311942.Nancy_Stroer https://www.facebook.com/nancy.stroer/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-stroer-86213089/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GIVEAWAY
Arandomly drawn winner will be awarded a $25 Amazon/BN gift card.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
