- New Arrivals
Fiction- Historical FictionCrime & ThrillersMysteryScience-FictionFantasyPoetryRomanceChildren’s BooksYoung Adult
- Biographies & MemoirsHistoryCurrent AffairsTech & ScienceBusinessSelf-DevelopmentTravelThe ArtsFood & WineReligion & SpiritualitySportsHumor
Children’s BooksListsBlogGift CardsMy ListsGames- About & Help
- About Tertulia
- Membership & Co-Ownership
- Shipping & Delivery
- Orders & Payments
- Contact Support
- Send App Feedback
- Follow us
- Download the app
The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Be Safe I Love You
Lauren Clay has returned from a tour of duty in Iraq just in time to spend the holidays with her family. Before she enlisted, Lauren, a classically trained singer, and her brother Danny, a bright young boy obsessed with Arctic exploration, made the most of their modest circumstances, escaping into their imaginations and forming an indestructible bond. Joining the army allowed Lauren to continue to provide for her family, but it came at a great cost.
When she arrives home unexpectedly, it's clear to everyone in their rural New York town that something is wrong. But her father is so happy to have her home that he ignores her odd behavior and the repeated phone calls from an army psychologist. He wants to give Lauren time and space to acclimate to civilian life.
Things seem better when Lauren offers to take Danny on a trip to visit their mother upstate. Instead, she guides them into the glacial woods of Canada on a quest to visit the Jeanne d'Arc basin, the site of an oil field that has become her strange obsession. As they set up camp in an abandoned hunting lodge, Lauren believes she's teaching Danny survival skills for the day when she's no longer able to take care of him.
But where does she think she's going, and what happened to her in Iraq that set her on this path?
From a writer whom "The New York Times" "Book Review" says, "writes with a restraint that makes poetry of pain," "Be Safe I Love You" is a novel about war and homecoming, love and duty, and an impassioned look at the effects of war on women--as soldiers and caregivers, both at home and on the front lines.
When she arrives home unexpectedly, it's clear to everyone in their rural New York town that something is wrong. But her father is so happy to have her home that he ignores her odd behavior and the repeated phone calls from an army psychologist. He wants to give Lauren time and space to acclimate to civilian life.
Things seem better when Lauren offers to take Danny on a trip to visit their mother upstate. Instead, she guides them into the glacial woods of Canada on a quest to visit the Jeanne d'Arc basin, the site of an oil field that has become her strange obsession. As they set up camp in an abandoned hunting lodge, Lauren believes she's teaching Danny survival skills for the day when she's no longer able to take care of him.
But where does she think she's going, and what happened to her in Iraq that set her on this path?
From a writer whom "The New York Times" "Book Review" says, "writes with a restraint that makes poetry of pain," "Be Safe I Love You" is a novel about war and homecoming, love and duty, and an impassioned look at the effects of war on women--as soldiers and caregivers, both at home and on the front lines.
Book Details
- Publisher: Thorndike Press
- Publish Date: Jul 2nd, 2014
- Pages: 447
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.85in - 5.52in - 0.97in - 1.21lb
- EAN: 9781410470423
- Categories: • Literary• Women• War & Military
Praise for this book
Riveting. "Be Safe I Love You" is haunting and rare: the story of a young female soldier returning home, torn between love and rage, unable to recognize who she once was. In lyrical, assured prose, Hoffman probes the ravages of war on the survivors, the power of forgetting, the defiance of love, and the possibility of forgiveness. "Be Safe I Love You" will make your heart race, and then break it. --Reiko Rizzuto, author of Hiroshima in the Morning
A gorgeously written, heart-wrenching novel that explores the damage inflicted upon a veteran of the Iraq war, and the varieties of love that ultimately sustain her. Cara Hoffman s "Be Safe I Love You" is a tour-de-force of literary suspense by a brilliant, fearless writer simply the best book I ve read in ages. --Elizabeth Hand, award-winning author of Available Dark and Generation Loss
"Be Safe I Love You" isn t just a beautiful and unsparing tale of a soldier s return from the Iraq War, though it is certainly that. It is a reckoning with the moral disaster of that conflict, one that no amount of news and reporting can give us because it requires more than facts. It requires the kind of imaginative transformation Cara Hoffman has accomplished here, turning the story of one young woman s journey from working poverty to war and home again into a song of lament for a country that has lost its way. --Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic "and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-nominated You Are Not a Stranger Here "
"Cara Hoffman gets it. She gets what war does to soldiers, inside and out, and she gets what they must face when they come home from war. Lauren Clay is a character readers won't forget: determined, admirable, and so loving that even as she goes to hell and back, we are ready to go with her. A riveting novel full of compassion for veterans and those who love them."--Helen Benedict, author of Sand Queen and The Lonely Soldier
"Riveting. "Be Safe I Love You" is haunting and rare: the story of a young female soldier returning home, torn between love and rage, unable to recognize who she once was. In lyrical, assured prose, Hoffman probes the ravages of war on the survivors, the power of forgetting, the defiance of love, and the possibility of forgiveness. "Be Safe I Love You" will make your heart race, and then break it."--Reiko Rizzuto, author of Hiroshima in the Morning
"A gorgeously written, heart-wrenching novel that explores the damage inflicted upon a veteran of the Iraq war, and the varieties of love that ultimately sustain her. Cara Hoffman's "Be Safe I Love You" is a tour-de-force of literary suspense by a brilliant, fearless writer -- simply the best book I've read in ages."--Elizabeth Hand, award-winning author of Available Dark and Generation Loss
""Be Safe I Love You" isn't just a beautiful and unsparing tale of a soldier's return from the Iraq War, though it is certainly that. It is a reckoning with the moral disaster of that conflict, one that no amount of news and reporting can give us because it requires more than facts. It requires the kind of imaginative transformation Cara Hoffman has accomplished here, turning the story of one young woman's journey from working poverty to war and home again into a song of lament for a country that has lost its way."--Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic "and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-nominated You Are Not a Stranger Here "