Embrace and Flow

Was love a four-letter word like hell or damn? Jules sure thought so. She was learning: love can happen anyplace, anytime, as any stage of life and certainly, when you least expect it. In her wildest dreams, she never expected to fall in love, and she's not sure she'll ever be the same again. The year is 2003. The place is Marine Corps Central Command, or more commonly known to acronym-loving military as MARCENT, on the U.S. Naval Base in the country of Bahrain. Jules Walker, a female lieutenant colonel and the lawyer for Marine Corps Base Hawaii, has found herself temporarily filling in for MARCENT's lawyer. What she doesn't realize is that in a few months the U.S. will invade Iraq, she will be an observer from the sidelines, and most importantly, she will be involved in the love of her life. Told from her first person perspective, the story unfolds chronologically from her arrival in Bahrain until her return to Hawaii nine months later. She works beside a cast of bigger-than-life characters: a General with driving ambition and a self-centric idea of his place in the world; a transplanted Brit and now Marine Corps colonel, trying to make his stay in Bahrain as proper and civilized as humanly possible; her counterpart, a bright, friendly lieutenant colonel, completely oblivious to everything that is going on with Jules; a sane, competent, and warmly human colonel who is the best friend of her lover, a Hollywood-handsome, emotionally distant colonel, referred to by Jules tongue-in-cheek as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, named Alexander Brousseau. It is sometimes hard for Jules to remember she is a military officer, working at a place preparing for America's most impressive invasion of a country since the Normandy Invasion.