On PTSD

It’s fate or something that just when I start writing this post in the passenger seat of my car, my husband drives past Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. My fingers leave the keyboard and I look up. It’s dark outside and the distinctive architecture of the Marine Corps museum cuts into the sky. I can’t see much else, but I’ve been there before and I can imagine the exhibits inside, discovered during a special trip with one of my best friends almost exactly a year after I’ll Meet You There sold to Macmillan. I’d visited on Memorial Day weekend, which included a visit to the famous Iwo Jima Marine Corps memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. For a lot of people, Memorial Day is a holiday, meant for barbecues and sleeping in. But in Washington DC, it’s more than that. And suddenly, for me, it became more than that, too. You don’t write a book about a nineteen-year-old Marine who loses his leg in Afghanistan and forget what Memorial Day means.

I’ll Meet You There is a love story about a really good girl who’s been dealt a really bad hand, and a bad boy trying to make good after one bomb changes his life forever. It’s also a story about war, poverty, death, grief, and how you can find beauty in unexpected places. And one other thing: it’s about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). A lot of my younger readers might not have any idea what that combination of…