Praise for 365 Deployment Days: A Wife's Survival Story

Sara Dawalt provides an intensely personal view of the anxieties, frustrations and pains that is endured by so many of our family members as they support their loved ones serving in harm’s way in so many areas around the world.  An absolute must read for Family members of deployed Service Members who think their challenges to maintain some semblance of normalcy while dealing with competing emotional, physical and spiritual [stress] are unique to them.  Sara presents, in exacting detail, that you are not alone and there are ways to deal with the deployment of your Loved One!! 

Florentino “Lopez” Carter

Commander, 2^nd Battalion, 8^th (US) Cavalry

Operation Iraqi Freedom II

This book has a realistic and true to life perspective of the harsh realities of separation that many Army spouses and Families have had to endure. Not many people think about the effects of deployment on spouse, the one left behind, until something happens. But this book shares some of the powerful thoughts of a day-in-the-life of an Army spouse that was just trying to handle the floods of emotions in her own form of combat. The raw nature of the book shows the different stages from anticipating the final day, the departure day, the many mixed emotion days of separation, followed up with the unending joy that is the redeployment and reunion day. A brave bold truth that highlights the givings and misgivings of  one couple’s plight through one of the hardest years of their life.

CH (CPT) Tim Maracle

37th Engineer Battalion (Combat)(Airborne)

20^th Engineer Brigade (Combat)(Airborne Corps)

Fort Bragg, NC

Sara Dawalt's 365 Deployment Days is a tale of figuring out how to cope when your other half takes off for war.  That sinking feeling of facing a reality without your spouse by your side is hard to put into words- the very thing that Sara has done.  This book offers accurate insight to the chaos one is plunged into and how to come back from that feeling of loneliness, helpless, and ultimately, the lack of control.  It is easy to identify with Sara and know that I am not the only one experiencing the crazy roller coaster of emotions!  It gives hope that the one left behind can make the most of it and come out better on the other end.  I don't know how I would have made it through my first deployment without this book!  I recommend it to anyone who is beginning or in the middle of a deployment and definitely to friends and family of the spouse that is staying behind- it might explain a few things!!!

Leigh from Killeen, TX

Jim Agnew's Daily Pick - November 21st, 2007