Between the devil and the deep blue sea A veteran's memoir

Poet and essayist Queen (Radical Poetics) delivers a bruising account of her experiences as a woman in the military. She begins by discussing her move from Los Angeles to Michigan to help her sister care for her children in the late 1990s. With their funds dwindling and Queen's job at RadioShack providing little help, she enlisted in the Navy to help her pay for college and achieve her dream of becoming the first person in her family to earn a degree. During her time in the military, Queen endured physical injury, casual racism, and rampant misogyny from her fellow sailors, which forced her to conceal details about her physically abusive partner. Along the way, Queen meditates on female trailblazers throughout history, including French noblewoman Jeanne de Belleville, who became a privateer to avenge the death of her husband, and 19th-century Navy commander Mary Ann Brown Patten, using their stories to consider what might happen "if history met women in terms of both failure and success." Throughout, Queen is by turns vulnerable and fierce, making resonant observations about the complexities of war, womanhood, and perseverance. Readers will find much to admire. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House. (Aug.)

Finding herself on the high seas. When Queen's sister Linda's drug addiction prevented her from properly caring for her children, her mother uprooted her and her sister, Naima, from Los Angeles to move to Michigan. Queen was forced to withdraw from the community college she attended in California and found it impossible to continue her studies at Eastern Michigan University. She felt trapped and hopeless until a Navy recruiter approached her at RadioShack, where she worked, and encouraged her to enlist. The promise of a fully funded education, combined with a ticket out of Michigan, was enough to motivate Queen to sign up, a decision that changed her life. In the Navy, Queen and her female colleagues faced intense sexual harassment. Queen is Black, so the harassment was accompanied by racism. The author struggled with her physical health, suffering a painful miscarriage. Before leaving the Navy with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, she gave birth to a baby boy, which unexpectedly saved her life: Pregnant, she left her assigned ship, the USSCole, before Yemeni troops blasted a hole through its center, killing some of her fellow sailors and traumatizing the rest. She emerged from her former life with a newfound sense of strength and confidence in her ability to navigate the future. Queen is the author of seven books of poetry and prose, and her narration glimmers with humor, frankness, and vulnerability. She beautifully balances empathy for her past self with a trenchant analysis of the systems that shaped her life story. A poetic page-turner of a memoir about a Black woman's time in the Navy. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.