Unremarried Widow

A frank, poignant memoir about an unlikely marriage, a tragic death in Iraq, and the soul-testing work of picking up the pieces (People) in the tradition of such powerful bestsellers as Joan Didions The Year of Magical Thinking and Carole Radziwills What Remains.Artis Henderson was a free-spirited young woman with dreams of traveling the world and one day becoming a writer. Marrying a conservative Texan soldier and becoming an Army wife was never part of her plan, but when she met Miles, Artis threw caution to the wind and moved with him to a series of Army bases in dusty Southern towns, far from the exotic future of her dreams. If this was true love, she was ready to embrace it. But when Miles was training and Artis was left alone, she experienced feelings of isolation and anxiety. It did not take long for a wifes worst fears to come true. On November 6, 2006, the Apache helicopter carrying Miles crashed in Iraq, leaving twenty-six-year-old Artisin official military termsan unremarried widow. In this memoir Artis recounts not only the unlikely love story she shared with Miles and her unfathomable recovery in the wake of his deathfrom the dark hours following the military notification to the first fumbling attempts at new lovebut also reveals how Miless death mirrored her own fathers, in a plane crash that Artis survived when she was five years old and that left her own mother a young widow. Unremarried Widow is a powerful look at mourning as a military wife.You can finish it in a day and find yourself haunted weeks later (The New York Times Book Review).