Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. He and his team would venture out in convoys from their Forward Operating Base to engage in the nerve-racking yet strangely exhilarating work of disarming the deadly improvised explosive devices that had been discovered - or to pick up the pieces when the alert came too late. They relied on an army of remote-controlled cameras and robots, but if that technology failed, a technician would don the eighty-pound Kevlar suit and take the Long Walk to disarm the bomb. When Castner returned home, he began a struggle with an unshakable feeling of fear, confusion and survivor's guilt that he terms The Crazy. His thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book immerses the reader in two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror, excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within - the haunting memories that will not fade, the survival instincts that will not switch off. The Long Walk is a powerful account of war and homecoming that grabs readers by the throat even as it touches their hearts. It will hook you from the very first sentence, and it will stay with you long after its final gripping page has been turned.
The Long Walk : A Story of War and the Life That Follows