Writing Spaces

Book review by Ellen Symons

I get excited when people I treasure have a book published. Like Playing Army, by Nancy Stroer, which kept me reading not just once through, but twice; and I would read it again. This book is gritty, funny, moving, and important. Its characters are beautifully drawn and care about things that matter, in the world. It asks hard questions about war and race and identity and chains of command, and moves us irresistibly toward uncomfortable conclusions—and beyond them to more questions about what any one of us can change, and how to stand up and do it.

Playing Army’s main character, Lieutenant Minerva Mills, starts the book searching for her place both in the army and in the world. Min’s father went missing in the Vietnam War, leaving behind only “completely truthful” letters and his 1968 Mustang. Her quest to discover what happened to him, and her mother’s alcohol-drenched grief at his disappearance, have shaped Min’s whole life, creating the person she thinks she’s allowed to be—a person who is not enough for her. Throughout the book she searches not only for her father’s story, but for her own.

Nancy Stroer’s writing in Playing Army is gorgeously poetic and sharply attentive to humans and the world. I laughed aloud and got teary. I felt pain and shame and empathy with Min, travelling the landscape of her hurts and hopes while she confronts her beliefs about what life requires of her. The book’s ending is fitting, with Minerva, after all her searching, choosing to write her own story and find ways to be herself no matter where she is. This is a book not just for people with a history in the military, but for anyone who wants to think, laugh, cry, and grow.