CLOSURE

In 1991, America was in the first Gulf War. As well as general concern for our troops and country, I had a husband and son in two different branches of the military then. This war was up close and personal, and I was deeply invested in news and monitoring closely.

I remember the day we learned Navy pilot Scott Speicher went missing.
Over the years, he was deemed dead, missing in action. There were sightings that included his name written on the wall in an Iraqi jail cell. His status was changed, his formal status in the military considered multiple times, but his case remained opened.

At the onset of the second Iraqi war, I heard a news broadcast with a marine who said, “We leave no man behind” and I thought of Scott Spiecher. He was gone but not forgotten.

That comment, often spoken with and heard by others with pride that our soldiers are
so devoted to each other and to us, haunted me. What about Scott?

And the storyteller took over, in a book I wrote and dedicated to Capt. Speicher and his family, HER PERFECT LIFE.

In it, a female pilot is shot down and deemed dead. Her husband and two small children mourn her, and then move on with their lives because as human beings that’s what we do.

Only our pilot wasn’t dead. And she spent the next six years being held prisoner by a tribal band.

And then she’s rescued--and that’s where the real story begins.

She comes home, unwilling to speak about her time in captivity. Others assume she’s doing so because she doesn’t want to remember. The truth is, she can’t remember. The tortures endured were too horrific and she’d survived by blocking them out, focusing only on getting home to her husband and her kids.

Only home isn’t there anymore. Her husband has remarried. Her children are strangers and unsure they want to know her. They love their stepmother--and on getting to know her, our returning heroine is full of anger and outrage at her perfect life being stolen and she can’t even hate the woman who replaced her because she’s been wonderful to her kids.

And so begins the work to rebuild a life from ashes. A future when everything that mattered to her was gone.

HER PERFECT LIFE. Shattered. Gone.

But in doing that work, our heroine Katie, discovers she hadn’t lost her perfect life. Her perfect life is now.

It’s quite a journey for Katie. For her husband, his wife, the children, and Katie’s co-pilot who was certain she was dead.
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Scott Speicher, Her Perfect Life, closure, memory, author, writer, novelist, creative writing, grief, mourning, loss, not knowing, vicki hinze, writers library