Ryan Leigh Dostie is a novelist turned soldier turned novelist. As an Army Persian-Farsi/Dari Linguist in Military Intelligence, she was deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom, where she translated very little, because they mostly speak Arabic in Iraq. After being wowed by the brilliant efficiency of the Army, Ryan left the military world for academic pursuits.

She’s studied abroad a few times, backpacked through several countries, learned a couple of languages, and wrote a whole lot. She holds an MFA in fiction writing and a bachelor’s degree in history from Southern Connecticut State University. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut with her husband, one wondrously wild daughter, a very large Alaskan Malamute, and a love-obsessed Australian Shepherd mix.

One of Bookriot's "Best Books of the Summer": Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets Anthony Swofford's Jarhead in this powerful literary memoir of a young Army recruit driven to prove herself in a man's world.

Raised by powerful women in a restrictive, sheltered Christian community in New England, Ryan Dostie never imagined herself on the front lines of a war halfway around the world. But then a conversation with an Army recruiter in her high-school cafeteria changes the course of her life. Hired as a linguist, she quickly has to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks, and has been holding her own until the unthinkable happens: she is raped by a fellow soldier.

Struggling with PTSD and commanders who don't trust her story, Dostie finds herself fighting through the isolation of trauma amid the challenges of an unexpected war. What follows is a riveting story of one woman's extraordinary journey to prove her worth, physically and mentally, in a world where the odds are stacked against her.