Finding Sgt. Kent
HUGEOrange Publication Review, Five Stars
Finding Sgt. Kent is a story about Robert Kent who finds that leaving military service in war-torn Afghanistan is not quite the relief and new beginning it should have been. The book opens with him spending pointless days in a VA inpatient unit for soldiers with PTSD and other issues. After fruitless sessions with the doctor trying to help him, he finally agrees to discover how his life has led up to his dissatisfaction and angst. He sets out to discover who his father was, a man he never met and never discussed much with his late mother. The doctor feels that discovering more about himself and his origins may help him adjust better into regular civilian life. But he emerges from the hospital with a changed vision of life, country and himself.
I didn’t trust the scan codes in the grocery store, the few people on the bus at night who looked at their shoes, people who wouldn’t look you in the eye. The headline on the magazines at the checkout, the stories about Afghanistan on the radio, all full of spin that the country was growing ever more democratic, ready to sit at the table with the grownups. Every day the Taliban murdered more people. If you couldn’t hold a truth in your hand, like a bullet, it didn’t exist. You couldn’t trust anything.
Although PTSD drives the story, it is not the full story. Robert has to confront his past and accept who his father was to move forward with his life. He encounters some truly awful people who just reinforce his outlook and hone his anti-social viewpoint further. And his self-preservation and defensive instincts are always at the surface, influencing and flavoring his every move.
