Powerful Reads for Memorial Day
This Memorial Day, we’re taking time to reflect with books that explore courage, sacrifice, resilience, and remembrance. From powerful wartime narratives to deeply human stories of loss and hope, these titles offer meaningful reading for the holiday weekend.
But soon after Queen completes her grueling training and boards a doomed destroyer, she finds herself faced with near-constant sexual harassment, demeaning labor assignments, and overt racism. Stuck on a ship with nowhere to hide, she looks to poetry, literature, and letters from home to get through the long days and maintain her dignity. She keeps her head down until the workplace hostility against women spills over into her dating life and threatens to derail everything she has worked for.
In trying to break through the unspoken code of silence between sailors, Queen must decide where her loyalties lie: with the Navy or within herself. Unflinching and masterfully penned, this memoir questions the promises of service to reveal the true price of being a woman at sea.
Alternating scenes from childhood with skirmishes in the Iraqi desert, this original, searing, and propulsive memoir introduces a powerful new voice in the literature of war. Jerad W. Alexander—not some elite warrior, but a simple volunteer—delivers a passionate and timely reckoning with the troubled and cyclical truths of the American war machine.
When Florence Finch died at the age of 101, few of her Ithaca, NY neighbors knew that this unassuming Filipina native was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, whose courage and sacrifice were unsurpassed in the Pacific War against Japan. Long accustomed to keeping her secrets close in service of the Allies, she waited fifty years to reveal the story of those dramatic and harrowing days to her own children.
Florence was an unlikely warrior. She relied on her own intelligence and fortitude to survive on her own from the age of seven, facing bigotry as a mixed-race mestiza with the dual heritage of her American serviceman father and Filipina mother.
As the war drew ever closer to the Philippines, Florence fell in love with a dashing American naval intelligence agent, Charles “Bing” Smith. In the wake of Bing’s sudden death in battle, Florence transformed from a mild-mannered young wife into a fervent resistance fighter. She conceived a bold plan to divert tons of precious fuel from the Japanese army, which was then sold on the black market to provide desperately needed medicine and food for hundreds of American POWs. In constant peril of arrest and execution, Florence fought to save others, even as the Japanese police closed in.
With a wealth of original sources including taped interviews, personal journals, and unpublished memoirs, The Indomitable Florence Finch unfolds against the Bataan Death March, the fall of Corregidor, and the daily struggle to survive a brutal occupying force. Award-winning military historian and former Congressman Robert J. Mrazek brings to light this long-hidden American patriot. The Indomitable Florence Finch is the story of the transcendent bravery of a woman who belongs in America’s pantheon of war heroes.
Florence was an unlikely warrior. She relied on her own intelligence and fortitude to survive on her own from the age of seven, facing bigotry as a mixed-race mestiza with the dual heritage of her American serviceman father and Filipina mother.
As the war drew ever closer to the Philippines, Florence fell in love with a dashing American naval intelligence agent, Charles “Bing” Smith. In the wake of Bing’s sudden death in battle, Florence transformed from a mild-mannered young wife into a fervent resistance fighter. She conceived a bold plan to divert tons of precious fuel from the Japanese army, which was then sold on the black market to provide desperately needed medicine and food for hundreds of American POWs. In constant peril of arrest and execution, Florence fought to save others, even as the Japanese police closed in.
With a wealth of original sources including taped interviews, personal journals, and unpublished memoirs, The Indomitable Florence Finch unfolds against the Bataan Death March, the fall of Corregidor, and the daily struggle to survive a brutal occupying force. Award-winning military historian and former Congressman Robert J. Mrazek brings to light this long-hidden American patriot. The Indomitable Florence Finch is the story of the transcendent bravery of a woman who belongs in America’s pantheon of war heroes.
They never acted alone, but always in the spirit of camaraderie, patriotism, and for the good of our beloved country.
There has never been a better time for all of us to think about duty, sacrifice, and what it means to be an American hero. “A monumental contribution to comprehending the motivation and distinguished service of American warriors. American Heroes is a book that every citizen should read.” —Association of the United States Army
“American Heroes is a gripping collection of firsthand accounts … capturing the indomitable spirit of our nation’s finest” —Jack Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Terminal List series
Grit, Spit, and Never Quit has action, tear‑jerker scenes, side‑splitting laughs, and plenty of bumper sticker moments. He’s jumped out of planes, he’s become one of the most recognizable comedians in the country—but at his core, Rob is a regular guy from Kansas with grit, spit, and the will to never quit.
In The Flipside, Michelle “MACE” Curran addresses how fear tends to force us back into our comfort zones and onto autopilot. She shares lessons she learned from high-stakes missions and life-defining moments, helping readers unlock their resilience to face life’s challenges with courage—and ultimately, rise above.
Raised by powerful women in a restrictive, sheltered Christian community in New England, Ryan Dostie never imagined herself on the front lines of a war halfway around the world. But then a conversation with an Army recruiter in her high-school cafeteria changes the course of her life. Hired as a linguist, she quickly has to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks, and has been holding her own until the unthinkable happens: she is raped by a fellow soldier.
Struggling with PTSD and commanders who don’t trust her story, Dostie finds herself fighting through the isolation of trauma amid the challenges of an unexpected war. What follows is a riveting story of one woman’s extraordinary journey to prove her worth, physically and mentally, in a world where the odds are stacked against her.
Sea Stories begins in 1963 at a French Officers’ Club in France, where Allied officers and their wives gathered to have drinks and tell stories about their adventures during World War II-the place where a young Bill McRaven learned the value of a good story. Sea Stories is an unforgettable look back on one man’s incredible life, from childhood days sneaking into high-security military sites to a day job of hunting terrorists and rescuing hostages.
Action-packed, humorous, and full of valuable life lessons like those exemplified in McRaven’s bestselling Make Your Bed, Sea Stories is a remarkable memoir from one of America’s most accomplished leaders.
When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.
In Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, Rubin narrates his own undoing, the profound disillusionment that took hold of him on bases in the U.S. and Afghanistan. He both examines his own failings as a participant in a prescribed masculinity and the failings of American empire, examining the racialized and class hierarchies and culture of conquest that constitute the machinery of U.S. imperialism. The result is a searing analysis and the story of one man’s personal and political conversion, told in beautiful prose by an essayist, historian, and veteran transformed.
Joe Johnson Jr. ran away from home at the age of 12, hopping a freight train at the height of the Great Depression. He managed to talk his way into the U.S. Army two years later. Seeking freedom and adventure, he was sent to the Philippines. Adrift in spirit, Joe visited a teenage prostitute, and they became unlikely, smitten allies. Yet when the Japanese attacked on December 8, 1941, their hopes of being together had to wait. Joe and his fellow soldiers fought for four brutal months in Bataan and Corregidor, until they were forced to surrender. The boy endured years of horror as a prisoner of war, only dreaming about seeing again the girl he’d come to love. This lyrically written and deeply encouraging saga will remind you that every life can be lifted, forgiveness is the patron of restoration, and redemption is available to all.