Unremarried Widow: A Memoir

by Artis Henderson

In the tradition of"The Year of Magical Thinking"and "What Remains," this breathtaking memoir by a young Army widowshares her heartbreaking, candidstory about recovering from her husband's death.""A world traveler, Artis Henderson dreamed of living abroad after college and one day becoming a writer. Marrying a conservative Texan soldier and being an Army wife was never in her plan. Nor was the devastating helicopter crash that took his life soon after their marriage. On November 6, 2006, the Apache helicopter carrying Artis s husband Miles crashed in Iraq, leaving her in official military terms an unremarried widow. She was twenty-six years old.
In "Unremarried Widow," Artis gracefully and fearlessly traces the arduous process of rebuilding her life after this loss, from the dark hours following the military notification to the first fumbling attempts at new love. She recounts the bond that led her and Miles to start a life together, even in the face of unexpected challenges, and offers a compassionate critique of the difficulties of military life. In one of the book's most unexpected elements, Artis reveals how Miles s death mirrored her own father s in a plane crash that she survived when she was five. In her journey through devastation and heartbreak, Artis is able to reach a new understanding with her widowed mother and together they find solace in their shared loss.
But for all its raw emotion and devastatingly honest reflections, this is more than a grief memoir." "Delivered in breathtaking prose, "Unremarried Widow" is a celebration of the unlikely love between two very different people and the universality of both grief and hope.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, War, Military Fiction, Biography Memoir, Biography, Grief

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2014

Reviews

[Kelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a spate of unfulfilling thrillers, I went looking for this memoir that has been on my to-be-read list for quite a while. I read this in a day and I have not stopped thinking about it since. This story, compelling, evocative and deeply moving, is one I will not soon forget. I can't articulate the depths of my empathy for the author or the connectedness I felt to her plight solely because of her beautiful, honest rendering of her own personal hell. I should say right now that I don't believe I can do this story justice in my review. I found it spectacular.

Artis Henderson is a tremendously gifted writer. She writes with such ease and fluidity that her story washes over you. Coming from a deeply personal place, she speaks to you as if you were her best friend and everything about her story then becomes palpable. From the fairytale beginning to deployment and beyond, her account of young love and military life feels relatable and honest...right down to the doubts and hardships. Once she learns of her husband's death, the real sharing begins and it is intense and painful, raw and heartbreaking. She takes you through it all as she mines the terrain of grief: anger, disbelief, numbness and utter despair.

Most impressive is her ability to tell this story with grace. There is much for her to be angry about and it would be easy to assign blame but she instead turns inward, honors the memory of her husband and wisely respects her own limitations with regard to how much information she wants to be privy to surrounding the helicopter crash. She digs deep, shares freely and exposes parts of herself that had to be hard for her to look at retrospectively, but are those pieces that make her human and that make her story real. In the end, this memoir is both heart rending and hopeful. I found myself smiling through tears at the final paragraph and consumed with a feeling of admiration for this remarkable woman, who found a way to navigate grief and realize her dream of becoming a writer. I wish her nothing but happiness in life and I hope she is always able to sense the presence of her late husband by her side. 5 stars.

[Darlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

"People kept giving me space, all of us hoping my grief had a half-life, but I didn't
need space. I needed to say Miles's name out loud. I needed them to not flinch when
I said it. Weren't they curious about the color of his eyes? I needed them to acknowledge
not just that he had died but that he had lived."

This honest and often raw memoir, 'Unremarried Widow' by Artis Henderson arose from an article she wrote for 'The New York Times' in 2010, entitled 'In Grief, a Mother and Wife Bond'. The title comes from the classification that the United States military uses to refer to the wife of a soldier who has been killed while on active duty. This memoir traces the author's first meeting of her husband Miles; her struggles with adjusting to military life; his deployment to Iraq and the grief and loss she experiences over his death which occurred just a few short months after their wedding. But this book is also something more... it is an acknowledgment and examination of the strange but ultimately comforting parallel Artis discovers between the course her life has taken and the trajectory of her own mother's life.

Artis Henderson met her future-husband, Miles, in a bar in Tallahassee, Florida in 2004. She describes their attraction and romance as something of an unlikely but happy surprise. Artis had plans of traveling the world and becoming a writer. She didn't have a formal religious background but often seemed to have more than a casual interest in seeking the advice of psychics and all that one would consider New Age-y. Miles, in contrast, was a conservative, regular churchgoing Army pilot who had enlisted in the military after September 11, 2001. Despite their differences, the two began spending every free moment together and when Miles found himself at Fort Rucker in Alabama, the two moved in together.

Artis Henderson honestly and candidly describes her struggles to fit into military life... a structured life she found so foreign and antithetical to her free-spirited personality. And she battled with the feelings that this new relationship with Miles was asking her to push aside her own plans and dreams and play a kind of supporting role in her own life. She couldn't help but compare her uncertainties with the army wives she met. These were women who had immersed themselves without reservation in the military culture and who were content to support their husbands and care for their families, often alone. She felt a distance from these women. But despite her internal struggles , Artis and Miles grew closer and when he received orders to report to Fort Bragg in North Carolina to prepare for his deployment to Iraq, she went with him... and in March of 2006, the two were married.

After Miles deployed, Artis continued to struggle with the military culture and living on base so she decided to relocate for the length of Miles's deployment, to her mother's home in Florida. It was at her mother's home that she received the news in July, 2006 that Miles had been killed in the Apache helicopter he had been flying in. And the second part of this memoir is Artis's meditation on those early days, the shock and loss she experienced.. that feeling of free-falling and being outside of herself. She so movingly describes the moment she arrived home after work to find two soldiers standing over her mother in their living room....

" I swept my eyes across the room: my mother in a dining chair in the middle of the living
room... the living room lights turned off; two soldiers in dress uniform filling the space. I
felt a drawing in at my navel, a great coming together of all the esoteric parts of me that are
neither flesh nor blood nor skin. A silver cord slipped free, pulling from that central place,
the part that keeps me whole. I imagined my soul draining out of me like liquid mercury,
disappearing into ether of my suddenly intangible existence. I hesitated on the top step
and thought about turning and walking back down to the garage. If I stayed on the far side
of the door, the soldiers could not tell me what they had come there to say. If they didn't
say it, it wouldn't be true....."

Once a person reaches a certain part of their life, they have probably experienced that feeling of disorientation that comes with a loss at least a time or two, but Artis Henderson was describing being widowed at the age of 26; and I was struck while reading her words just how beautifully she had captured the feelings that accompany a loss... the numbness which sets in when receiving the painful news.. pain so all-encompassing that it feels like a physical blow. And later in the book, she writes about her anger. When the realization dawned that not only had she lost the person she loved most in the world but that her loss also included all the possibilities and dreams that she and Miles had invested in their relationship, she felt an overpowering anger. She writes...

" I was suddenly furious at everyone. The soldiers in Miles's unit, the ones who had
survived; the government, whose political decision makers ordered men overseas but
would never send their own sons to die; the American public whose SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
bumper stickers faded and peeled while everyone turned their faces from the war and forgot...
I was angry at all of them......."

Another aspect of this book that I found so striking was the eerie parallel that ran between Artis's life and her mother's life. Artis's mother had also been widowed at a young age. Artis's father, who had been a pilot for Eastern Airlines, had kept a plane at their home (a Piper Cub) in Georgia and he frequently took his wife and daughter for weekend flights. A week after Artis's 5th birthday, her father strapped her into the plane and took her for a flight... a flight from which he never returned. The plane crashed and he was killed and Artis spent months in the hospital recovering from a broken spine. Artis writes so eloquently about how her mother's handling of her father's death left her feeling confused. Her mother's way of handling his death was to remove all signs of him from their lives and the two never spoke of him. Artis never wanted to hurt her mother so she chose never to mention her father's name and she ended up losing him from her memory. Miles's death brought this previous tragedy back to their lives and it also contributed to Artis's anger towards her mother....

" But more than anyone, I was angry at my mother, who knew exactly how I was feeling.
Who had lost a husband... who I had tried my entire life not to become and whose fate,
despite my best efforts, I now shared."


There was an openness and honesty to this memoir that allowed me to easily empathize with Artis Henderson. She wrote so candidly about her ambivalence about Army life and her struggles to maintain an identity separate from Miles. She wrote so movingly about not only the emotions she felt upon learning of Miles's death but also the sheer physicality of her grief.. describing the disorientation she felt and how the act of sorting Miles's belongings sent to her by the Army... his wedding ring, his wallet, and even the T-shirts he had worn... literally left her breathless. And she wrote with such clarity about her sense that her grief was often the source of discomfort and awkwardness for friends and co-workers... leaving her feeling isolated and unable to express what she desperately needed emotionally. She illustrated this so perfectly when she relates a phone conversation she had with Miles's commanding officer, Captain Scott Delancey, who had called to ask if she needed anything...

" I needed everything. I needed someone to fix the hole in my screen and to move the heavy
boxes on my patio. I need someone to plant the mango trees I was always talking about
buying and to paint the dining room chairs. I needed someone to come home to, to speak
to, to listen to. I needed someone to hold my hand at night. But instead of telling him any
of that, I talked about the thousand mundane things that filled my life."

I LOVED this beautiful and heartbreaking memoir about grief and loss.... and yes, it was even about eventually finding the strength to carry on with life. And this memoir was also a reminder to me that behind all of the impersonal statistics issued regarding the loss of life in our never-ending wars, are REAL people who leave behind REAL people who love them and are grief-stricken and struggling with their losses.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a few days to get into this, but then I read from page 55 to the end all in one sitting. When I finally looked up, I was surprised to see it was after midnight. This story was interesting not only as a memoir of grief, but also as a way to gain some understanding of what it's like to be a military wife. At first Artis was somewhat scornful of the other wives and the way they had such insular lives and friendships. Through her own loss, she came to understand how military wives need those bonds with each other. No one else can understand what it's like to endure the deployments and uncertainty and death.

There are a few things in the book that might have been better left unshared, such as Artis sleeping with her husband's friends after he died. But I figure her openness could be helpful to other women who have made similar mistakes, so they know they're not alone.

Artis Henderson is a talented writer. She keeps the story moving along, letting us feel her pain without ever seeking pity or becoming mawkish. I think Miles would be so proud to see the way she moved through her grief and created a new, successful life for herself.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is sad that Artis Henderson's first book is her memoir, Un-Remarried Widow as it is so good I wished she had a happier story to tell. There are many stories about widow's of war, women who lose their husbands, so what makes this one special? Maybe nothing more than the sheer familiarity of loss.

Artis Henderson's husband, Miles, a soldier on deployment in Iraq, loses his life in 2006 when his Apache helicopter crashes. What grabbed me was the title and it's image, seeing Artis not as a young married woman who has lost the love of her life, but that of her new military ID card listing her officially as unremarried widow. So military speak. I heard Artis in two book talks before reading her book. She poignantly tells of how we envision being informed of a soldier's death. There is protocol here, a military order and yet, this isn't how it happened for her. She felt blind-sided and irrational as it may seem, angry that the two soldiers who were to inform her were already inside, no knock on her door, no way to keep them out and keep her husband Miles alive. She also felt some bitterness that her mother, who had also lost a husband to an air accident, should be able to help Artis more as she had been through this too.

I knew immediately that this was not going to be an easy book to read but I wanted to know more about Artis and more about Miles, and more about their life together. What I got was a portrait of a two young people with very opposite views, who somehow come together and manage, though not always happily, their military marriage. They marry in 2006 and very soon after leave Fort Hood for Fort Bragg where they rent a trailer outside the base as Miles waits deployment. This is telling in itself as Artis is not all consumed with her role of military wife. She tells of their last night together, and how she fell asleep and Miles comment "You’re going to feel bad if something happens to me over there and you spent our last night together sleeping".Miles is able to phone now and then and during one she suggests that they buy a home in Florida, close to her family. Her idea is to move there during his deployment, and perhaps even during some of his time stateside as he has a 6 year commitment to fill. They argue this and the conversation ends badly. One of the other wives phones Artis and berates her for upsetting Miles while he is being shot at and doesn't need the stress Artis is causing.

In foresight you always know which is the last letter and in his, Miles tells how he made a video but didn't send it as he might try doing another. Artis takes us through the rest, the assignment to her of her CAO, casualty assistance offer, the paperwork, the payout, the return of his body and effects, the funeral, and the days and months and then years that follow. She explores her relationship with other military wives, her testing of new relationships, exploring career, returning to college and how eventually she and her mother are able to talk about her father's death. Finally the writing of this book. Author, a goal she has had and one she has finally met.

I am hopeful that this book will help others and bring some understanding of the loss that is felt when a soldier dies. My mother's first husband died in World War II. They were young and parents to my brother and in my mind's eye, this was my mother's first true love. If he had not died I would not be here, but what a loss. My mother never spoke much about this time in her life. Perhaps it was too painful. I've always wanted to know more about her feelings. This book was helpful to me in this regard.

Un-Remarried Widow is a heart rending read. Artis Henderson does Miles proud but more importantly validates the woman she is. Nothing less than 5 stars is appropriate.

[Michelle Schingler · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Goodreads Giveaway Winner*

I didn't intend to read Artis Henderson's memoir in one sitting, but it commands that much attention.

An unflinching account of married life in the armed forces, Henderson's book shows what it's like to love, and lose, someone whose life is not entirely their own.

Artis was hyper-educated and slightly cynical about love when she met Miles at a joint called the Library, but found herself quickly enamored. She was a feminist with big dreams; he was a Republican and a pilot in the army; they personified opposites attracting. Henderson recalls the sweet fever of falling in love, sharing heated reminiscences of passionate weekends which led to quick life shifts.

Soon she was leaving her job to follow him from base to base, initially as an army outsider--a girlfriend instead of a wife, and so excluded from base society. She found herself boxing up dreams of success and independence, and asking "is he worth it?" at many turns.

For Artis, though--despite the tribulations and expectations of loving a military man--the answer was always yes. Miles wasn't what she expected, but she needed him, depended on their love, and hoped, when she sent her young husband off to Iraq, that they'd have a long life together.

The title gives away her inevitable disappointment, and the second half of the book is a memoir about grief, healing and forgiveness. Artis found herself reliving her mother's story--she, too, had been widowed young by a plane crash, had, too, lost the love of her life after too little time. She, too, had needed to find a way to reinvent herself once she'd learned to manage the pain.

Artis is a terrific writer. She speaks at length about love and sex, though her reflections never become cloying. Her accounts of grief are poignant; later sections of the book are heartbreaking. She doesn't package army life prettily, nor does she sugar-coat her relationship; she gives space to disagreements and disappointments. Her honesty makes the project all the more emotionally demanding to read.

I didn't expect to be so moved by this memoir, but cried until I couldn't anymore. Artis will earn your deep empathy, and her memoir will remind you that, when you remember to thank a veteran, your gratitude should extend to their spouses and families, who also suffer so much for their careers, and who're left to carry on if they don't come home.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Unremarried Widow” was the official status on Artis Henderson’s military ID after her husband of four months, Miles, went down in an Apache helicopter in Iraq in November 2006. In this beautiful, understated memoir, she chronicles her relationship with Miles and her entry into a peculiar tribe she never would have chosen to join – that of widows, and military widows more specifically.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Henderson’s memoir is that she keeps you reading with bated breath even though you know exactly what will happen. There is a definite sense of inevitability here: a psychic told Henderson she’d marry a cowboy type before the age of 25, and Miles himself dreamed of his helicopter crashing nine months before his deployment. Worse, there is an element of history repeating itself: Henderson’s father also died in a plane crash, one that left her with a broken spine at the age of five. It may seem like terrible irony, but it also means that Henderson was finally forced to understand her mother’s fate – by participating in it herself.

Miles wasn’t the man Henderson expected to fall in love with. He was a Texas country boy, a Republican gung-ho for the Army; she was an Ivy League-educated Floridian who was vocally against the war in Iraq. And yet she ended up following him from base to base, taking on dead-end jobs and having no status because she was just a girlfriend and not a military wife. Still, she wondered whether she’d regret giving up her dreams (of returning to Paris, for instance) for Miles’s sake. “It looked nothing like the life I had imagined and yet it was like the most natural thing in the world, with Miles there at the center of it.”

Doubting her decision to be with Miles was a painful memory, but it was nothing compared to the thought of his actual death. Henderson and Teresa, Miles’s fellow pilot’s widow, learned that their husbands were trapped in the Apache when it went down in a sandstorm, and burned to death. Henderson would struggle to forget that image, even when it turned out that, in Miles’s case, the report wasn’t accurate. Teresa became obsessed with a conspiracy theory of sorts – she believed their husbands were too skilled to have crashed due to pilot error, and must have been shot down instead.

While Teresa conducted her own investigation through autopsy reports and cockpit recordings, Henderson tried to move on with her life: she cleared out Miles’s things, gradually built up her career in journalism through work for local Florida papers, and eventually moved to New York to do a master’s at Columbia. All along she struggled to find her identity as an unexpected widow, joining a bereavement support group that met in a hospice and taking part in a survivors’ Memorial Day weekend seminar. A couple of potential romances presented themselves along the way, and a few more visits to psychics kept a sense of mystery and the unexplained alive – something I particularly appreciated.

Henderson takes a fairly standard chronological approach to her material, but it works well. She neatly avoids melodrama throughout, and there are some truly gorgeous passages (such as “A violet light split the air, smoky and flint-tipped, like Indian arrowheads”). Reconstructed dialogue is another of her strong suits, especially the way she often lets sentences trail off; this might not be as pretty as you usually get in memoirs, but it’s realistic, and often used in a teasing way during flirtations.

I seem to have a strange fondness for grief memoirs (e.g. Christopher Rush’s To Travel Hopefully), and this was a strong one. I look forward to what Henderson comes up with next.

(I was delighted to win a copy in a Goodreads First Reads giveaway.)

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't quite put my finger on why I'm disappointed with this book. From the description, you expect it will be sad: A newlywed Army wife loses her husband in the war. The death of the pilot soldier recalls the death of her pilot father when she was 5. Her widowhood recalls that of her mother. I was hesitant to read this book, because I thought it would make me weep. But I felt no urge to cry. I spent more time trying to figure out why the couple got together in the first place, and why/how they stayed together. Their differences seemed fundamental--religion, political leaning, etc. She does not describe any meaningful discussion of these differences. While she certainly describes her devastation, I'm not convinced they would have lasted as a couple had he survived.

She complains about putting her own dreams/self on hold for him, for his career. She wants to be a writer, but she doesn't mention any writing during her time with Miles. I don't know anyone who wants to be a writer and doesn't just write, whether they're being paid for it or not. That doesn't seem a dream that would have to be shelved for marriage, even for an Army wife. I think she must have kept a journal to have the memories for the book, but she doesn't say so. That just strikes me as strange.

She complains of loneliness and isolation, but makes no effort to connect with the women who share her situation. Because they are not married for most of the time they are together, she cannot fully join the Family Readiness Group. Later, in her grief, she realizes that resource was there for her and she chose to ignore it. Maybe she was just too young.

I also feel sad that she goes through it all without faith in God. Her husband was a devout Christian, and while she occasionally went to church with him, she stayed apart from it.

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone gifted me this book back in 2014 when it was released thinking I'd enjoy a memoir featuring the difficulties in becoming a military spouse and the loss of a soldier husband in war. After reading the back blurb, I noped the book right onto a shelf where it's been for almost 10 years. It's only now that we're 1 step removed from military life that I finally decided to read it. Told in short episodic like sections, we follow Artis Henderson through meeting her husband, her experience dating an active duty soldier, their marriage, her husband Miles' death just 4 months after their wedding, and her experiences after with both the military and efforts to move on. There are also some interesting side parallels to her mother's own experiences as a woman widowed when Artis was 5. It's a lot to pack in only 240 pages, but the spare writing works well here. It's a real and raw story, but it's not a book I'd recommend to everyone - definitely not an active duty spouse whose husband was out of town at the time.

[Gin Tadvick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book at lunch. Just finished it! (Second "sad" book in as many days). What an extraordinary book. My heart breaks for her and for all military spouses who know that they are sending their loved ones in harms way. My father was Military also and until he "really" retired ( with some branches of the military, there is retirement and then there is retirement), we also worried about him being called up and then all that can follow from that.
Thank you, Artis, for sharing your memories of your husband and his group; for sharing the grief and trials that you went through and despite the sadness - the hope of love, even short-lived on this side of the veil.

[Carol MacInnis · Rating 4 out of 5]

At age 5, Artis went up for a quick plane ride on her step-father's small plane when, what was to be a pleasant day, turned into a disaster. The plane went down and her step-father was killed and Artis was in critical condition. Although Artis' mother adored her second husband, after the accident, she never spoke of him again. Almost 20 years later, Artis fell in love with Miles Henderson who was a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army. Although Artis found army life difficult, when Miles proposed she quickly accepted. Shortly after that, Miles was deployed to Iraq and Artis was left on her own. A few short months later, Miles apache helicopter went down and all on board were killed. Now as a young widow, at just 25 years old, Artis Henderson is left alone with just her memories and the grief she tries desperately to overcome.

A heart-wrenching memoir of Artis Henderson and the pain and suffering of losing her handsome young husband of four months and the huge impact this made on her as well as the step-father she had for a short time. Two huge figures in her life for such a short time, now gone forever. She also reaches out to her mother to rebuild their broken relationship.

I read this book in one sitting with a nice cool glass of water and a full box of tissues!

[Paul Pessolano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Un-remarried Widow” by Artis Henderson, published by Simon & Schuster.

Category – Memoir Publication Date – January 07, 2014

This is a book that should be given out by our military to all women who have lost their husbands, sons, and boyfriends in the service of their country.

Artis Henderson met her husband, Miles, when she needed to add meaning and purpose to her life. Miles was in flight school for the Apache helicopter and would be deployed to Iraq at the completion of his schooling. Artis had misgivings from the beginning regarding their relationship due to the fact that her father was killed in a plane crash when she was five years old.

Artis relates how she and Miles struggled, mostly Artis, to military life. She tells of the times Miles was gone for long periods of time and the traveling from base to base, to say nothing of the poor pay. When Miles is finally deployed to Iraq she tells of the pains of separation and how difficult it was to keep their lives together, even though their love for each other never wavered.

Then comes the moment that all military wives and husbands dread, the day they receive a visit from the military chaplain and the casualty assistance officer. If this is not bad enough, one must go through the military funeral, a beautiful ceremony, but one filled with grief. How can one not get emotional at the playing of Taps and the handing over of the flag to the next of kin. On top of this, one must now go through his or her personal effects.

A bold story told with great compassion and honesty that goes beyond the norm in the telling of the struggles that remain after the funeral.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, my! I don't really have the words to convey how much this story grabbed my heart.

"Unremarried Widow" is an unrelenting love story. The courtship and marriage of Artis and Miles Henderson is the stuff of which dreams are made. Poignant, vivid, engaging. "Miles, a man of gentleness and courage, whose goodness emanated from him like heat." A compelling look at military life -- the moves, the friends, the time-fillers, the homesickness, the loneliness.

And then grief. "Good grief"? There is no such thing. "...drowning in a stunned sorrow too immense to voice". In aching prose, Artis shares with us the devastation of her life after Miles is killed in Iraq. The military procedures. The days and weeks and months of being classified an "Unremarried Widow". Her love for Miles never stops. She dreams of him "in the early hours of the morning, the time when the veil between the living world and the afterlife is thinnest".

This memoir is such a roller coaster of emotions, love and despair and anger and hesitation and confusion and faith, that I felt absolutely "wrung out" when I finished. It made me happy, it made me sad, it made me mad.

A wonderful love story, wonderfully told and not to be missed.

I read this ARC courtesy of Simon and Schuster.

[Brina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for fast reading at the library and this book jumped out at me for its lovely looking cover. Artis Henderson is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and a gifted writer. I was drawn in by her poignant tale- I don't want to give spoilers- and wish her well with the rest of her life. She has overcome much and I hope she will journey on happily.

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Un-Remarried Widow" by Artis Henderson which I won from Goodreads Giveaways is one of the most heart- rending and poignant memoirs that I've had the privilege of reading in a long time. I cried through this story which deals with the pain of tragic loss, but one which also brings healing and hope.

In 1985 Atis was severely hurt in an airplane accident that claimed the life of her father. What she couldn't understand as a child was why her mother seemed to make her father disappear, giving away all his belongings and packing away a few personal effects, then moving away from Georgia. In 2006 a recently married Artis was to endure another tragic loss, that of her beloved husband Miles who dies with John Priestner in Iraq in an Apache helicopter crash. In the months that follow Artis desperately searches for a way out of the fog of grief that envelopes her, seeking release in grief share groups, friendship with other military widows, and in the arms of a soldier, a friend of Miles. But it's only when Artis begins to awaken to the sentiment in Mile's last request to " follow her dreams with all her heart, with honour and decency," that she begins to heal. As her life takes on new purpose, memories of Miles forever locked away in her heart, she reconciles with her mother and is able to understand and share their experience of widowhood.

The novel opens up the world of suffering and heartache that military families endure after the death of a loved one, in this case a husband and son. Artis Henderson writes this memoir with passion, honesty and candor. She's a remarkable young woman who has the bravery and fortitude to overcome the pain of her grief enough to begin a journey towards the fulfillment of her dreams, which Miles wanted for her life. In these pages Artis gives us an intimate look at the young soldier, Miles Henderson who stole her heart and who made an impact on her life that will endure for a lifetime. He was a kind, considerate Christian man who loved her unconditionally. In life when he stumbles in his human frailty he 's humble enough to ask for forgiveness, and even after death his courage and love continues as his last words encourage Artis to move forward.

In this story I admire Teresa Priestner who's striving to put her life back together in the face of unresolved questions and conflict about the crash; the Hendersons who strive to come to grips with the loss of their son; Captain Scott Delancey who struggles with his own demons surrounding the tragic death of his friend, and all the military widows and widowers who grieve their losses. But I have a great deal of admiration and respect for Artis's mother, a woman who buried her grief to console her wounded child, but whose memory of love has never faded.

Although I don't think the cover does the novel justice, this is a timeless story whether in this century or ages past when parents, children and spouses have losted the warriors they loved fighting far from home to protect those left behind from the tyranny of evil. My prayer for Artis is that she continues to follow her dreams, keeps the memory of Miles alive in her heart, but finds love and happiness again in this lifetime.

[nomadreader (Carrie D-L) · Rating 5 out of 5]

(originally published at http://nomadreader.blogspot.com)

The basics: After surviving the plane crash that killed her father when she was 5, Artis Henderson recounts losing her husband during a helicopter crash in the Iraq War.

My thoughts: I'm a huge fan of The New York Times Modern Love column. When I heard Artis Henderson, whose Modern Love column I cried throughout, published a memoir expanding on the topic of losing her husband, I knew I wanted to read it, even if war widow memoirs aren't typically a genre at the top of my list. And I'm so glad I did. It's a good thing the reader knows about the joint tragedies in Artis's life from the book's beginnings, becuase Henderson still packs an emotinoal punch. As I read, I was crying hard enough I had to leave my bed, where my husband peacefully slept, to go downstairs where I could read and sob in peace.

I'm not necessarily drawn to stories of tragedy, but I immediately connected with Artis as I read. She and I are almost exactly the same age, and I easily imagined my life in the early 2000's. Our dreams at that were so clearly aligned: "As long as I could remember, I had wanted to be a writer. I had this Hemingway-inspired fantasy of living overseas and writing, and I had imagined a life filled with art and literature and well-traveled friends." She writes about her younger self with such honesty and insight. There's the duality of remembering the naivete of her early twenties but not being dimissive of it. Henderson seamlessly fuses the past and present in this memoir into a unified voice.

The first half of this memoir tells the story of how Artis and Miles fell in love. Even knowing how the story ends, it was a love story that swept me away. It isn't an idealized fairy tale, and Artis recounts it with love and authenticity. She doesn't shy away from their hardships and doubts. I credit her bravery for being able to write with the appropriate honesty and distance. The memoir's second half had me constantly crying. I moved between soft tears running down my face and full-on ugly cries. I am so very glad I read it in the privacy of my own home where I could fully embrace the feelings reading this book gave me.

Favorite passage: "I needed them to acknowledge not just that he had died but that he had lived. That he had lived and loved me and for a space of time we were whole. But I am lying. Even now I struggle to tell the truth of what I needed."

The verdict: Artis Henderson writes with both a critical distance and an emotional honesty. It's as much a modern love story as it is the story of a young woman's life. Unremarried Widow is a brave, harrowing, emotional, gripping memoir I won't soon forget.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

[Karyl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit that this book was rather difficult for me to read. As a Navy wife whose husband serves mainly on ships, I was relieved of most of the worry that our Army and Marine Corps spouses endure each and every time their loved ones deploy. Even considering the devastation of the attack on the USS Cole, I knew that my husband was mostly safe when he was gone from me for months at a time. Artis Henderson wasn't as lucky. Just four months after her marriage, her husband Miles is killed in a Black Hawk crash in Iraq. This book describes not only the meeting and coming together of two vastly different people, but the ways in which Henderson eventually had to come to terms with her grief and learn to live with it.

I really enjoyed the writing of this book. Henderson seems to be able to sense the perfect timing in her prose, and she never gets bogged down in details that don't matter. Her flow is incredible, and leaves the reader flipping pages like mad just to keep reading. We know what's going to happen. We know that her husband dies and she finds a way through the grief. But somehow we just keep turning those pages.

There's a lot of raw grief here, and Henderson shies away from none of it. Not every person is one to stand on a street corner and wail, so her outward emotions may have fooled people into thinking she was strong, or brave, or cold, or all three, when really she lets the reader know how desperately she's fallen apart inside, how she's really just marking time and constantly missing her husband. I found myself tearing up several times in sympathy.

I don't think we can blame Henderson for not wanting to delve more deeply into her husband's death, the way her sister widow, the wife of the other pilot, did. Some people deal with grief by developing a mission of sorts, and that was the other wife's mission, to know for certain what caused the crash. Henderson just isn't of the same cloth, and while it's true that information only she can access may help her sister widow in her investigation, she's just not ready for that now. Maybe one day she will be. I can't imagine wanting to see autopsy photos or to listen to my husband's last screams as his helicopter crashes. I too would probably want to protect myself from that.

This is an incredible moving and well-written memoir. It's not for everyone, however, but if you can stomach it, I believe it should be read by many. It may make us pause before we engage in another war, to see the personal devastation it leaves behind.

[Angela Risner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Artis Henderson writes about navigating life after he husband is killed in a helicopter crash while serving in Iraq.

As Henderson states in the beginning of her book, the story is told through her own eyes, to the best of her ability. Of course, all of us tell our stories that way - we see the world as we are, not as it is, so the famous quote goes. I do believe that she absolutely adored her husband and was completely in love with him. Though they seemed to have little in common, they clicked and it worked for them. I always say that you don't have to find the perfect person, you just need to find the one that's perfect for YOU.

To discuss more about the book, I need to go into some spoilers (though some of the book was part of articles already published.) So...SPOILER ALERT!

I found Artis herself to be, well, lacking in the story. As another reviewer pointed out, she writes in first person, but it's almost as though she wrote a character rather than herself. It's cold, analytical more often than not. I did connect with her emotionally in a couple of places, but I couldn't get there most of the time. Maybe that's just who she is.

Obviously, it would be easy to speculate what would have happened had he not been killed in Iraq. Would the way she felt about military affect them if they had been together longer? Or would he have returned from Iraq/other tours bitter and wanting out? It's hard to say.

I think that this author has promise. I do think she's still finding her voice.

Just okay.

[Wendi Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Artis Henderson is a new author. I say she will be on the bestseller list soon. I thoroughly enjoyed her style of writing.
Artis and Miles meet in a very conventional way,at a club. At first sight the attraction between them was evident. They do the usual dancing,flirting,and the first awkward kiss. It was no looking back after that.
Army life proved to be stressful in their lives, moving from here to there. But their biggest challenge came when Miles was deployed to Iraq. Despite his excellent training and excellent skills, Miles did not come back alive. It is at this point in the book that the author's real talent shines. She was able to convey the soul retching pain she had ever endured in her life. Chapter after chapter sped by as I was transported to the darkest level of her being, her struggles to come to terms with her life as it was. Through conviction and Miles last words to her in a letter, "pursue your dreams wisely,with all your heart,with honor, and with decency.." she became an excellent writer. I can hardly wait to see more stories created by Artis Henderson.

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I began reading this book I was excited to dive in and read her story. I felt so bad for her to deal with a loss of a father and husband both due to crashes.
However as time went on I sensed a lot of selfishness: wanting to move in separate locations only months into marriage, her regret of not getting a life she chose, and a complete shutdown with her friend Teresa sought help in discovering if their husbands death was wrongly classified.
I could've also done without the frequent generic advice from psychics throughout the story. Found it interesting that's who she turned to when her husband claimed Christianity.
I do think Henderson has potential as a writer and appreciated her honesty in writing: I like that she didn't portray herself as faultless.
Even though I was overall a little disappointed it was an easy read and I always enjoy army insight.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an emotional book, I could not put it down. My heart ached for Artis and Teresa. My husband was also in the Army and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and I just can not imagine him never coming home. This book had me crying and laughing and feeling exactly how the author felt. I am so proud she was able to pick up the pieces and bring us this wonderful book. I will always be forever grateful for our Veterans and now I add Miles and John to that list. Thank you so much for sharing your story, Miles must be so proud of you.

[Nicole Ogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chose this book for a different reason than most. I had the honor of serving in Iraq with Mr. Henderson and was on duty in operations the night he and Mr. Priestner were killed. I do not know Artis, but she told her story so beautifully. I cannot fathom the kind of pain she experienced. This book was written with wonderful detail. I hope she publishes another book!

[Sarah Arteaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s true... one sitting and that’s all it took to finish this memoir. I was captivated and broken, all at once. By the time Artis took to grieving, I literally went to panting and clinging to my sleeping husband, tears soaking the skin of his back. He had been in the military, too. I knew danger always lurked around the corner all those years (something I had chosen to avoid), but to imagine having to go through this tale has completely torn me apart. Thank you, Artis, for bravely telling your story. It wasn’t just the end of another book for me—it was much more. I will be haunted by your experiences but thankful for the lesson in love that you remind me not to take for granted.

[Lynda Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, Artis Henderson is an incredibly gifted writer. This memoir was heartbreaking and joyful, inspiring and gut-wrenching…I feel so fortunate to have stumbled upon this at my local library book sale. Truly one of the most eloquently crafted stories I have read. I was deeply moved and am still savoring this masterpiece.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

It just didn't grab me, the writing didn't impress and I was relieved to finish it.

[Nancy Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Artis Henderson writes an intimate and painful portrait of her grief after her husband is killed while deployed to Iraq.

Artis and Miles Henderson, an Army pilot, were just beginning their lives together when tragedy struck. All was not idyllic -- Artis was having trouble adjusting to Army life and beginning to wonder whether she'd made a mistake. But in her grief, Artis feels again, this time painfully, the love she always had for her husband and the promise of their life together, now forever gone.

I've read military memoirs before, but not one that describes so starkly the moment when a military spouse is notified of a spouse's death. "Women will tell me later that they knew. Just knew," she writes of the moment the two soldiers in dress uniform arrive. "They knew the minute they woke up. They knew as they cleaned their houses in fits of clairvoyant anticipation. They knew as they dressed and waited on the couch for the soldiers to come. Did I know?"

This slim book is divided almost equally between the couple's life together and the author's grief after her husband's death. Because you know so much about Artis and Miles, you grieve along with the author. Some books don't tell you enough about life before you get to the death and grief (e.g., The Wave) and some are written from too detached a position to evoke emotion in the reader (e.g., Saturday Night Widows). The only distraction for me was the author's habit of conveying long stretches of dialog that detracted from the momentum and interest of the story. But that's a minor quibble, and nothing that should keep you from picking up this lyrical and gripping book.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some readers shy away from sad stories. The death of a spouse, child or pet are topics that most people aren't comfortable talking about, let alone reading books whose main focus is the grief one faces with such losses. I, for some morbid reason, am drawn to these narratives. Perhaps losing a child and a parent has made me more curious about how others deal with their own grief; perhaps I am subconsciously comparing their grief to mine.

I came across Artis Henderson's memoir in the ARC stack at work one day and took the book home before even glancing at the back cover or publisher's letter to booksellers. I had a gut feeling it was something I'd want to read (Note, I didn't say enjoy, because rarely does one enjoy such a book.) and added it to my stacks. It turns out I was right. Unremarried Widow is a engrossing memoir that reads like fiction. I rarely stay awake more than 15-20 minutes at night while reading in bed, but Henderson's debut kept me wide awake for well over an hour. On the first night, I finally turned the light off at 11:00 pm, but could have easily read the entire book (242 pages) in one day.

Final Thoughts:

For a book about death, Unremarried Widow is a page-turner, filled with raw honesty and beautiful prose. We know the outcome from the opening pages, yet the details are compelling and heartbreaking. The author has always dreamed of becoming a writer and I think she can safely say that she's achieved that goal. I will eagerly seek out her next book.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Artis Henderson was almost exactly my age when she suffered the devastating loss of her husband Miles in Iraq in 2006 in a helicopter crash - an all too tragic similar scenario to the loss of her father as a child. With that in mind, my expectations going into this memoir were that it was going to be tragic - and it is, but Artis Henderson writes so beautifully and I felt so connected with her story (despite having absolutely zero ties to the military) that it felt even more raw.

Artis Henderson provides a really tender exploration of the building of her life with Miles before it was snatched away, her relationship with her mother and the other military wives and support systems. How do you pick up your life when something like this happens to you, especially when your lives together had only really just begun? It's a horrific question to have to answer, and is what the latter part of the memoir delicately explores.

I smiled, I cried, and at the end I really felt a connection with the author. I only hope that this book does as well as it deserves to, and I know her husband would have been incredibly proud of this amazing woman and this beautifully written memoir.

Highly recommended.

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

[Darrie-Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started and finished this book in one sitting.
I received Un-remarried Widow as a ARC from Goodreads.
I was so excited when it arrived in the mail.

As the sister of two soldiers,and the close life long friend of another I knew that the story would not only appeal to me, but that I would immediately care for the real "characters".

I always enjoy reading someones memoir. I like to step inside of their life and to learn how they made their way through their grief, triumphs, problems and journeys. This book did not disappoint me at all.

Reading Artis Henderson's love story that she shared with her late husband Miles was lovely, sad, and touching. The story share's not only their lives, but their relationships with people who lived around them, like other army wives, their mothers, friends, and other soldiers.

Artis Henderson tells her story of their love, making her way in an army world. It talks of her tremendous loss, and how she and tries to find her way again on her own through her grief.

I very much enjoyed it, and it is a beautiful tribute to Miles. I know that it is a story I will not forget.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very nervous to read this book. My husband was in the military when I married him, and I was worried that this book would bring up too many emotions about that time period even though it's been nearly ten years. Well, it did pull at every emotion I have. I was a wreck reading this, but this was still a great book to read.

The beginning of this memoir told of Artis and Miles' love story. It could have easily been about any other military couple. This brought up so many memories for me. The military towns just outside of base, frustration with the military lifestyle, the unique friendships that are made due to circumstance. The big difference in this story and my life was that Miles' never came home from Iraq, and my Marine returned after every deployment.

I commend the author for telling this difficult story. The biggest fear of every military spouse is that their loved one won't return from training or a deployment. That this fear became a reality for Artis is horrible, but this is a reality for many whose loved ones have been sent to fight for our country. This was a beautifully written story, quite a tear-jerker, and worth the time spent reading it.

[Patricia (Pat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I receieved an Advance Readers Edition of Unremarried Widow.
For 5 minutes and $5, a psychic forecast that Artis should "pack her cowboy boots because her life and love would be out West."
Aris was a free spirited, wanna be writer, who wanted to travel the world She met Miles Henderson at a club in Tallahassee, Florida. He was an Army pilot learning how to fly helicopters and to protect his country. They traveled together from Army camp to Army camp and got married three years later. Deployed to Iraq, Mied eles was killed in an unexplained Helicopter crash.
To me, this was more than a memoir. It was an exploration into her grief and loss, which touched my heart. The most touching thing to me was a letter written to Artis by Miles should he be killed. It was so beautiful as he declared his everlasting love for her, reassembled her life and coaxed her to fulfil her dreams.
A great read that will have you in tears and thinking about this lovely story long after you read the last page.