Life During Wartime

by Katie Rogin

Fiction. Post-9/11 America is an uneasy place where soldiers and civilians try to find their way through a fallen world of personal trauma and social disconnection. Twenty-one-year-old Nina Wicklow, untethered after a tour of duty in Iraq, has gone missing outside Los Angeles in the small mountain town of Sierra Madre. An ad hoc search party of damaged family and friends assembles to look for her. The anxious pursuit to find the missing soldier, before she comes to harm, plays out against a backdrop of global financial near-collapse and raging wild fires, and becomes, for the walking wounded, a quest for meaning and a way to live during wartime.

214 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2018

About the author

I'm a reader and a writer. My debut novel Life During Wartime has been published by Mastodon Publishing. I wrote for ABC’s “One Life to Live” for which I won a Writers Guild of America award. I wrote, directed and produced the short film “In A Blue Mood” which screened at Urbanworld, the IFP Market and the Austin Film Festival. I also wrote the historical mystery game “SPQR: The Empire’s Darkest Hour” which was released by GT Interactive. My short fiction, essays and criticism have appeared in VICE’s Tonic, PANK, Intellectual Refuge, Quartz, The Rumpus, The Chattahoochee Review, BoomerLitMag, The Millions, The Brooklyn Rail, Streetlight, Terrain and Sports Illustrated. More info and links at www.katierogin.com

Reviews

[Call Me [Brackets]]

War means many things; for some people, it happens in dusty, far-off lands in camouflage and comes home in the form of valor-filled stories, shiny medals, and veteran ball caps. For others, it’s the daily prickle of loathing, addiction, or fear under your skin, begging you to give in. Still others see war in stateside streets: on drugs, on poverty, on gangs, on each other. No matter the perspective, after the dust settles, we are able to identify Before the war, when life was tipping closer to the edge every second; and After the war, the relief washing over with a tinge of regret. It’s the only way humans can process these events which take hold of our lives, shake them like a snowglobe, and leave us to pick up the pieces― learning from the Before, and appreciating the After.

In her debut novel Life During Wartime, Katie Rogin explores how we live in our 21st century wartime ― a wartime that has no beginning and no end (“He couldn’t shake this needling concern that war was everywhere, didn’t end or begin, even when you came home.”)

You can read the rest of our review on our website here:
https://callmebrackets.net/bookshelf/...

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

After 9/11, a man reels from losing his brother and having to deal with being a survivor as a responder from the attack. He is shocked to find out that his dead brothers child, Nina is missing. He enlists the help of a ragtag team of friends and family to locate the missing girl who happens to be a war veteran. This book was a bit of a drag to read. The book rapidly introduces a lot of characters after the first chapter and there is little to no character development with any of them. By the last third, I was not only very confused but sadly did not care about anyone either.

[Martin Ott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katie is a writer to watch - this is a really good book on an up-and-coming small press.