SOLDIERING ON - FINDING MY HOMES Memoir of an Army Brat

MWSA Review

This story makes tasty rolls from bittersweet dough. Shared long after mom and dad are gone,Christine Kastner describes her twenty-one year Army family experience and other odd things that happened afterwards. The author's dad made teeth in the Army - no jumps or stormed beaches. Yet their unique Army life typified families who serve and endure all the changes that service prescribes. As a kid, Christine Kastner and her brothers move through10 schools and 21 homes with mom and dad, to include military houses in 1960's Okinawa. She joins other "Trekkies"in a late-life return to find their roots in present day Okinawa. The author sews together a story that stitches the past and present together. Kastner searches to find a deeper family history as mom and dad's ashes remain in jars on her brother's shelf, long after the two were supposed to be interred by him. Like a museum visitor, the reader sees all kinds of peculiar things, events, and places. This book may not be for those who like shiny things. But I suggest it for anyone who appreciates the beauty in common things that can be shined.

Reviewed by:Hodge Wood (2014)

Author's Summary

Some military brats rode camels in Arabia . . . others leaped from parachute training towers . . . but this little army brat rode backwards in the rear "jump-seat" of the family station wagon all the way across America . . . without a seatbelt! Christine Kriha Kastner grew up the only way she knew-on military bases stateside and around the world. By the time she turned in her military I.D. card, when her father retired from the U.S. Army, she had lived in fifteen different houses and attended ten different schools. Situation normal for an army brat. Living on Okinawa was a memorable overseas assignment. So when an opportunity to return to that little island in the Pacific Ocean arose after forty years, she couldn't pass it up. Kastner returned to the island she remembered from her youth-with the 73-year-old mother of one of her best friends. Together, they took a Kubasaki High School reunion trip timed to coincide with the 4th Uchinanchu Festival that brought thousands of Okinawans back to the island from all over the world. It was the adventure of their lifetimes, just not quite the karaoke, sake and pachinko experience they expected.