A New Literary Nonfiction Series Beginning This Thanksgiving
This Veterans Day, I am announcing What Remains: The Stories I Carried Home, a new series of literary nonfiction veteran stories drawn from my years interviewing and photographing Veterans, families, caregivers, and community members.
My job was to tell stories.
I interviewed Veterans, nurses, caregivers, volunteers, artists, and military families. I photographed them. I sat across from them in offices, conference rooms, patient rooms, community centers, and gathering places throughout Southern Illinois.
I listened as people spoke about combat, illness, trauma, art, family, recovery, loneliness, and the difficult work of returning home.
At the time, I thought I was writing articles.
Looking back, I realize I was collecting pieces of humanity.
I didn’t know how long these stories would remain with me. I didn’t expect certain faces, photographs, and conversations to return years later. But they do.
I still think about the people I interviewed. I wonder how their lives unfolded after our conversations. I wonder who is still alive, who found peace, who kept fighting, and who remembers the younger writer sitting across from them with a camera and a list of questions.
I remember a terminally ill Marine who wanted one final motorcycle ride.
I remember a military child trying to understand the father who returned from Iraq.
I remember combat veterans arriving at a hospital with an unusual request: they wanted permission to hug people.
I remember veterans carrying a flag through Southern Illinois, continuing a mission long after the original mission had ended.
I remember sitting down to write about the invasion of Iraq and slowly realizing that I was not only documenting history. I was trying to understand my own place inside it.
The Stories That Changed the Writer
I appreciated these experiences then, but I understand their value differently now.
Every interview helped me grow as a person, a Veteran, and a writer. These conversations taught me how to listen when someone offered a vulnerable part of a life. They taught me that stories carry weight and that the person trusted to tell them has a responsibility to carry them with care.
They also helped me understand myself.
As a combat veteran, I returned from Iraq carrying bitterness, uncertainty, and questions I did not always know how to ask. Listening to other Veterans and their families gave me ways to examine my own experiences. Their stories helped me reconnect with parts of myself I had left unresolved.
I believed I was helping tell their stories.
Their stories were also helping me heal.
The lessons followed me beyond my job. They shaped the way I teach writing, coach fighters, mentor young people, publish books, raise my daughters, and approach the people whose lives cross my own.
The uniform changed. The mission changed.
The stories remained.
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What Remains: The Stories I Carried Home
Beginning this Thanksgiving season, I will return to five encounters from my years of interviewing and photographing Veterans and their families.
These will not simply be reposted articles.
I will revisit the original interviews, photographs, and events through the perspective of the writer I have become. I will share what happened outside the published stories, what remained in my memory, and how these people quietly influenced my understanding of war, homecoming, mortality, human connection, service, and purpose.
The series will include:
The Night We Drove Toward the Fire
A return to Iraq, a child named Ali, and a photograph of the young Marine I once was.
The Soldier Who Came Home as a Stranger
A military child’s honest account of the father who returned from war and the family that had to learn how to recognize him again.
The Last Ride
The private interview that helped a terminally ill Marine’s final wish leave the room and become a public procession.
Human Project: Hugs
The sunny day when a group of combat veterans entered a hospital offering connection instead of armor.
Charlie Mike
A reflection on why Veterans continue searching for missions and how fatherhood, teaching, boxing, publishing, and storytelling became mine.
Why I Am Returning Now
As writers, we sometimes return to old projects looking for unfinished ideas or forgotten sentences.
Sometimes we are looking for the people we once met.
Sometimes we are looking for the person we were when we met them.
Reopening these files has filled me with nostalgia and gratitude. The articles remind me of meaningful work, of the people who trusted me, and of the younger writer who was still learning what storytelling could do.
The original pieces captured moments in their lives.
This series will explore what those moments mean to me now.
I am not returning to make myself the center of someone else’s story. I am returning because time has revealed another layer of meaning. These stories helped shape the veteran, father, teacher, coach, publisher, and writer I became.
Years later, they are still changing me.
The First Story Arrives This Thanksgiving Season
The series will begin with the first installment:
“The Night We Drove Toward the Fire”
From there, one new essay will be released each month through March 2027.
I invite you to follow the series through Mind on Fire Books, join the newsletter, and share your own reflections along the way.
These are stories about Veterans, but they are also about families, caregivers, witnesses, and communities. They are about the rituals and relationships people create after life changes them. They are about what survives war, illness, isolation, and loss.
Most of all, they are about the stories we carry long after we believe the telling is finished.
This Veterans Day, I find myself grateful for every person who trusted me enough to speak.
It is time to carry their stories forward.
Thank you for visiting with me. For more Reviews or Literature related content, or to keep up with this series, please subscribe below. (Copyright Mind on Fire Books)
Based on your taste in literature, I think we could be good friends. Sign up below for the archive below and free eBook giveaways.
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