‘Silent Heroes’ is a highly emotional read, action-packed, a vivid story of enormous sacrifice and bravery.’Silent Heroes’ is the ideal read for the fans of ‘The Kite Runner’ and ‘Dear John’!When Talibans descends in the village of Nauzad and discover girls can read, a woman accepts the blame and is killed on the spot for breaking the Islam law. Her teenage daughter witnesses the sacrifice and … teenage daughter witnesses the sacrifice and swears revenge, her life and that of her brother becoming intertwined with those of the US Marines serving at FOB Day nearby. But the Taliban is infiltrated everywhere and friends or foes are hard to differentiate. The U.S. Marines fight with bravery to protect the civilians of Nauzad and to fend off the Taliban at Qala-e-Bost, thus protecting Bost Airport, a vital strategic point for the allies. Faced with questions about the necessity of the war, with the trauma of losing their platoon-mates and the emotional scars of battle, the US Marines race against time in one last battle of eradicating the Taliban before it is too late.
The War in Afghanistan is a contemporary, vitally important conflict whose meaning needs to be understood by the public worldwide. ‘Silent Heroes’ is a narrative about the value of life and the necessity of combat; the terror of dying; the ordeal of seeing your loved ones and your platoon-mates killed in front of your eyes; the trauma of taking a human life.
Read about very well trained MWDs, military working dogs, capable of detecting the smallest traces of explosives, working in the extreme weather condition environments, under the stressful battlefield situations that is the War in Afghanistan.
Smart and agile, at the end of the day what these dogs are looking forward to is the close bond they developed with their handlers, which call themselves the dog’s partners, brothers, daddies.
From the storyteller of the Bestseller “Joyful Trouble” comes a riveting, fictional account inspired by the War in Afghanistan, a battle that spanned centuries and has affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
“Light, knowledge, they bring the courage to look at the people around us, accepting them for what they are.”
“Do you ever think that history speaks of victors and captors, of battles and soldiers whose lives have been lost and history even counts them, but of the casualties on the civilian side?”
“When soldiers grieve, time takes a screenshot and a new star rises in the sky.”
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Silent Heroes: When Love and Values Are Worth Fighting For is a 2019 contemporary fiction release by Patricia Furstenberg. I became familiar with this author and book through the blogging world, and in my quest to add more realistic, literary fiction focusing on cultures around the world to my reading queue this year, I decided to pick it up this week. While not my normal reading genre, this novel is filled with awareness, heart, sadness, confusion, and pain — people suffer, but sometimes, a little good can come out of it.
Early in the book, we learn of a woman who dies because she taught others how to read and write. She is tricked / forced into doing something against her Islamic religious beliefs, but if she doesn’t, the Taliban might kill her. Ultimately, they were going to kill her any way, as a lesson to others. She should never have been placed in such a position, but that’s what evil people do. Regardless of beliefs, no one wants to kill another. Ugh, what suffering these people have been through… but this sets the tone for the story. It is not an easy one to digest, yet when you know this is as close to reality as you’ll ever get, and probably quite on par with things people experience in Afghanistan every day, it becomes even harder to accept. Life is cruel. Can one Eternal God or Deity or Allah truly allow all this massacre? Furstenberg explores this gem of an idea (reality) in her tale, and it’s quite visceral and powerful.
In a more positive and tangible scene (to me), a man roams the dessert searching for IEDs with his beloved military dog. A young boy is trapped on one, afraid to move, or he will explode. He asks, how can the US let this happen to us? They are standing there every day, yet they do nothing. The question, though hard to accept at face value, is a valid one. Through her characters and story, the author pushes her readers to think about a world possibly so distant from our lives, it cannot be understood unless you’ve experienced it in person. The descriptions of places and people are wonderful and heartbreaking — I felt like I was there checking for the explosive, watching the pain during multiple deaths around the dessert, worrying about children and parents who were lost.
This is the kind of book that makes you wonder about your place in the world. Though the tale is mostly fiction, it is based on many real experiences and knowledge. I’m in awe of how well researched this book was… Furstenberg has included such minute details (in a good way) that she must’ve spent hours crafting the specific word choice in order to convey exactly what goes on halfway around the globe, to someone removed like me. What I liked most about this novel is the history lesson Furstenberg provides, interwoven throughout the meat of the story. Sometimes the narrator is telling us how the Taliban formed. Other times, one character is relaying to another (both to Afghans and to US soldiers) what truly has happened over the years to cause the rifts, e.g. between the USSR and British influence in the area.
If you want a creative, informative, emotional, and intriguing story about the conflicts and drama people face day to day in Afghanistan, as well as connect with characters who have to kill and love all within the same few moments, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this novel. The writing is wonderful, and even though the topic is one I’m not often a frequent reader of (too realistic to handle sometimes for me), it brilliantly shows off the author’s talents and the harshness of our world. Great book to experience something different than a traditional suspense or mystery read. Quite literary. Quite recommended by me.
Helmand Province is considered one of the deadliest regions in Afghanistan. It provides the setting for the fictional village of Nauzad, an area where Taliban insurgents terrorise local villagers, forcing them to grow opium poppies, banning women and girls from learning to read or write, capturing boys and forcing them to fight…
The author introduces her readers to the plight of the villagers, after the execution of a well educated mother who sacrifices herself to save her children.
A short distance from Nauzad, Forward Operating Base Day is home to a group of marines who battle daily with the changing tactics of the Taliban.
A team of Military Working Dogs or MWDs – Tara, Xena, Ramba and Honda, have been highly trained in sniffing materials used in IEDs. Together with their handlers, Seb, Conde, Kent and Dunn, they bravely search roads, fields and paths for new explosive devices, often planted under cover of darkness in areas that families and children frequent. These dogs are treated with the same honour and respect as any other combatant, which is skilfully portrayed by the author.
This book is incredibly well researched, and provides many edge of the seat moments, as the marines search for the Taliban’s hiding spots in The Hindu Kush Mountains and beyond. Relying on local guides, they put their lives at risk in a country dealing with “displaced people, ethnic tribal and religious rivalry, crime and corruption, malnutrition and disease, and not least, with humanitarian abuse.”
Highly recommended.
Life in a war torn country.
As much as this novel is about Afghanistan and the centuries old conflicts in the region, it is about the people. The local villagers who face the day to day challenge to grow food when all the arable land is taken by the Taliban to grow the lucrative poppy. The constant fear that armed men will descend on your community and kill indiscriminately to enforce a barbaric regime that devastates families. And the terror of IEDs that are constantly being laid across land next to your homes that murder and maim young and old alike.
One family in particular witnesses the cruelty of this enforced existence, when their mother is murdered, and a young boy and teenage girl find their lives entwined with the soldiers whose remit is to protect the villagers and to fight and remove the threats from the Taliban.
Enter another family formed by the men and their highly trained dogs at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Day. Under the leadership of the enigmatic Captain Marcos, these men and their canine companions sweep the ground around the villages to remove the IEDs repeatedly planted by the insurgents. They also undertake operations within their territory to find and attack the bands of rebels threatening both the villagers and the occupying forces.
The author does a very good job in engaging us with the cast of this tragedy that has been playing out for hundreds of years, and introduces us to the key elements of the history of the region that brings us to the present day conflict. Tribal dynamics, religious intolerance and foreign intervention all have their part to play. But at the end of the day it is those who have little say in the matter who are affected the most.
There is danger, loss and great courage shown by the young men within the unit at FOB Day and those who come to their aid, such as combat medics. We end up with a better understanding of the role of the dogs who loyally face the risks of bomb clearance daily because of their love of their handlers. We also gain an appreciation of the impact of this role on both dog and man as they are wounded physically and mentally.
We also witness the stoic tenacity of the local people to carry on with their daily lives, the courage and determination of two young people to try to bring justice and retribution to those who have devastated their family, and the sacrifice that is made by men and women who reject the tyranny.
War and its tragedy is not light reading, but Patricia Furstenberg does offer some moments that show how even when oppressed, people will find a way to create a garden of beauty and sustenance, and that the spirit of defiance and courage will find a way to flourish.
I recommend that if you are unfamiliar with why and how the young men and women of our armies are involved in this conflict, that you read Silent Heroes. It is a way to honour their service, that of their canine brothers-in-arms, and the bravery of the Afghanistan population, trying to exist in a country torn apart by devastating conflict.