In this engaging memoir, decorated Army veteran Ryan McDermott shares his experiences of survival through the hardships of military life and the equally difficult struggles that follow.

McDermott’s mother broke up with his father before he was born, leaving McDermott to spend his childhood imagining who this man might be and fantasizing about becoming a “Jedi like Luke Skywalker, rising from humble beginnings to become something more.”

After gaining acceptance into West Point and later attending and successfully completing the grueling Ranger School, McDermott meets and marries Lucy. The pair soon begins a family, but McDermott’s commitment to the Army takes him away from home, and his marriage suffers.

When McDermott leaves the military and plots his career in investment banking, the couple’s problems grow increasingly worse. In time, the pair split up and McDermott finds himself living out of a suitcase and sharing a home in Washington, D.C. with two roommates. Here, McDermott is a victim of a home invasion, a crime that forces the veteran to take stock of his life and seek help.

This is an intelligently written memoir, rich in detail about both military life and the world of finance. McDermott writes with honesty about the experiences in his life that have made him successful in his many difficult endeavors, but that also helped create the inner turmoil that ultimately brings him to “a battle I cannot win. I can’t see the future,” he writes. “It is an abyss.”

This is a memoir that could have easily cast the narrator as a victim or, conversely, as hard-boiled and invincible, but instead reveals a sensitive and introspective father, veteran and husband. The well-wrought narrative will appeal to a wide audience, but particularly those with a personal connection to the military, first-hand or otherwise.

Also available in paperback.