Books like The Generosity of Scars

The story is now quite a famous one, which has since been made into a TV miniseries.

Yet, my having lived over two decades in a once-occupied country, I’ve become especially sensitive to the toll that foreign occupation brings on conquered nations, their inhabitants and cultures. 

In All the Light We Cannot See, we as readers become instantly immersed in the cultures of two children—one blind and living in Paris; the other a German orphan with little direction in life other than his love of tinkering with machines. The read itself, I found provocative in that it explores the innocents—mostly women and children—caught up in the devastation of war.

The novel’s setting is the current Breton village of Saint-Malo, but in the 1940's, where the paths of two teens—a blind French teenager, Marie-Laure (Loberti), and a German soldier, Werner (Hofmann)—cross after Marie-Laure fled Paris with her father to what… show more.

This narrative read to me like an emotional rollercoaster—one that was both heartbreaking and uplifting.

The explorative core, I felt, was created by the deepening sisterly bonds throughout. In this, the protagonist, Imogen, develops an understanding of what it means to love and be loved. I both liked and related to how Imogen poured her creative energies into her artwork while experiencing her past and present converging and colliding.

What has been described as a real-life fairy tale—in fiction form, of course—is one that sneaks up on Imogen. She literally doesn't see it coming. And the read itself is so whimsical that one like myself could easily get lost in its plot. With that in mind, it’s a fun recommendation.

The memoir is based on a female perspective of being one of an English immigrant couple living, working, and raising a family in challenging and changing South Africa, which I found a riveting read.

Val’s having to play the singular parent—wife, mother, breadwinner—while putting up with her husband's self-centered behavior, I thought, was no less than soul-crushing. Her husband’s badly formed, egoistic decision-making led him to leave her and their family in South Africa to pursue better job opportunities in the Netherlands.

Miraculously, her grit and determination not to be defeated but to rise from such an otherwise devastating separation were, to me, no less than inspiring. Highveld Ways is a great read coupled with an incredible insight into the changing land of South Africa during and shortly after Apartheid. 

"While we can't completely escape trauma, we can productively integrate it into our lives." —author Larry Bograd

It was the eve of thirteen-year-old Larry's bar mitzvah... and the eve that his doctor father snuck into the family bathroom and hung himself. Grief entwines families in many secrets, and Larry spent the next forty years unmasking them.

I’ve known this author from when he was a young professor, and I was one of his literature students at MSU in Denver, Colorado. What I hadn’t known then was the quiet trauma that haunted him throughout his youth with the baffling question of why his own father, a Ukrainian child immigrant with a later promising medical career and loving family, could have done such a thing, which left them all a growing family with deeply puzzling scars.

Larry’s quest to unravel family secrets motivated a youthful quest into what was then the pre-glasnost… show more.

This book is an eye-opening look into modern warfare, particularly in the context of Colombia and America’s military involvement there. Klay, a veteran himself, writes with a moral clarity that brings home the idea that war is never just a localized conflict—it’s part of a much bigger web of power, politics, and personal ambition. The novel follows multiple perspectives, from American soldiers to Colombian civilians, each grappling with their role in the chaos.

What I found most compelling is how Klay shows the ripple effects of violence—how decisions made in one corner of the world can devastate communities thousands of miles away. This book intimates tough questions about the ethics of intervention and how far-reaching the consequences of these decisions can be. It’s an intimate, often painful look at how war transforms individuals, and it challenges us to think about the cost of global conflict—not just for those on the… show more.

This may be the ultimate stray dog rescue story. Craig (the human) rescues Fred (the dog) from a war zone in a remote part of Afghanistan. What Craig goes through to bring this dog home to the US is astounding. And Fred is one of those instantly lovable, charming dogs whose personality shines through in Craig’s writing. In many ways, this book crosses genres—dog book, memoir, adventure, military, and thriller (I held my breath while reading several times!).

Major Jane McMurty is a complex character trying to work through PTSD acquired under fire in Afghanistan while integrating back into civilian society. Her “sidekick” is a dog named Shady who epitomizes the independence and intelligence of a working dog. As a past breeder of working GSDs, the interactions between woman and dog are quite realistic, and quickly pull me into the story.

This is a woman used to standing on her own two feet, but now they aren’t there. The love she has for the K-9 who went through the war with her, Shadow, shines through her actions, and in the way that she fights to bring Shadow home. Even though this novel highlights several very real issues faced by returning veterans and amputees, this is far from a “sob story.”

I love the strength the main character shows and the way she treats her current dog, Shady. That… show more.

Alexievich is equal parts therapist, poet, and historian. She elicits deeply personal memories through oral histories that she artfully weaves into a portrait of vast events. The accounts gathered in this history of the Soviet Union’s ten-year war against Afghanistan give voice to soldiers’ memories of the country they were asked to defeat, which defeated them instead, and parents’ memories of sons killed or otherwise destroyed in battle. I read this book after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, which initiated an equally brutal, mindless, and losing war, and I find sad new relevance in this book as I learn of Russian soldiers being shipped home from Ukraine in the same kinds of zinc coffins that gives this book its title.

Buddy the Soldier Bear is an adorable story that highlights the journey of a care package.

Having grown up in a military family, we sent care packages to our service members when they were away. I distinctly remember our classes encouraging us to write letters and add our favorite drawings to the packages. It makes a huge difference in morale for service members to know that someone cared enough to think of and send a handwritten note.

It’s an emotional story that encourages readers to remember the military community outside of special holidays. With very relevant illustrations, the story offers appreciation and compassion for military families. There is a sense of adventure as Buddy joins the soldiers during military assignments until he safely accompanies the soldier home. 

Troll told me that he read this book in preparation for his own deployment to Afghanistan. Winston Churchill said about campaigns in Afghanistan, “Financially it is ruinous. Morally it is wicked. Militarily it is an open question, and politically it is a blunder.”

It doesn’t feel like much has changed.