Unremarried Widow

April 15, 2013
Journalist Henderson chronicles her passionate but unlikely romance and marriage to Miles, a fighter pilot who fit the stereotype, "American by birth, Texan by the grace of God." In 2006, Miles' helicopter crashed in bad weather, and there were no survivors. They had met three years earlier in Tallahassee, when he was still in training. A recent college graduate, she hoped to travel and become a writer. A chance meeting at a bar led to an immediate attraction, and soon they were commuting back and forth on weekends between her Florida apartment and his, near Fort Rucker. He was politically conservative and a regular churchgoer who joined the military after 9/11. The author describes herself as a vehement opponent of the Iraq War, a young liberal "more New Age-light than Biblical." When Miles was reassigned to Fort Bragg, they decided to live together. The author describes the difficulties of her life, as he was frequently reassigned, and she could only find minimum-wage jobs and felt little in common with the Army wives she met. Despite this and his frequent absence on deployment, the growing bond between the two was deepening. She called her mother for help, describing her frustration and posing the question of whether she was wasting her education. When her mother asked, "Do you love him?" her reply said it all: "I love him more than anything." They married in March 2006, and he deployed to Iraq in July. Henderson writes movingly of his poignant, last letter to her, to be delivered should he be killed. She recounts how he urged her to pursue her dreams and relates her struggle to do so, despite her grief. Henderson, who graduated from Columbia University's School of Journalism and now works as a journalist, first shared her story in the New York Times "Modern Love" column. A beautiful debut from an exciting new voice.

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November 1, 2013
On the surface, Henderson has crafted a deeply moving memoir of love and grief that takes readers into the life of a military wife turned widow in a way that both embraces and transcends expectations. Shifting back and forth to before and after her husband's death, she revisits her unlikely romance with a man whom she adored but who nevertheless led her away from the life she had planned and the career options she sought. Henderson fell in love with a soldier but not with military life, and her struggle to fit into his world continued right up until his death in a non-combat-related helicopter accident in Iraq. Her willingness to reveal the complexities of her marriage as well as the raw emotion of her loss makes for a compelling page-turner. Book clubs will find much to discuss here. As much about life as it is about death, Unremarried Widow is a wholly American story that will find broad appeal with every reader who has ever wondered if she made the right choice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2013

Award-winning journalist Henderson surprised herself by marrying a conservative Texas soldier, then lost him when his helicopter crashed in Iraq, leaving her "an unremarried widow" (in military parlance). Here she recalls her life with Miles and her efforts to right herself after his death, also explaining how his death parallels her father's in a plane crash she herself survived at age five. Already in demand.

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