Title: Eyes Right
Author: Tracy Crow
Genre: Memoir
Reviewer: Bob Doerr
ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B007IPQ4XC
Just out of high school in 1977, her personal life already a mess,
Tracy Crow thought the Marines might straighten her out. And sure enough, in
the Corps she became a respected public affairs officer and military
journalist—one day covering tank maneuvers or beach assaults, the next
interviewing the secretary of the navy. But success didn’t come without a
price.
When Crow pledged herself to God, Corps, and Country, women Marines were
still a rarity, and gender inequality and harassment were rampant. Determined
to prove she belonged, Crow always put her career first—even when, after
two miscarriages and a stillborn child, her marriage to another Marine
officer began to deteriorate. And when her affair with a prominent general
was exposed—and both were threatened with court-martial—Crow was forced
to re-evaluate her loyalty to the Marines, her career, and her family.
Eyes Right is Crow’s story. A clear-eyed self-portrait of a troubled teen
bootstrapping her way out of a world of alcoholism and domestic violence, it
is also a rare inside look at the Marines from a woman’s perspective. Her
memoir, which includes two Pushcart Prize–nominated essays, evokes the
challenges of being a woman and a Marine with immediacy and clarity, and in
the process reveals how much Crow’s generation did for today’s military
women, and at what cost.
