Along the Watchtower [Paperback]

From the author of Live from Medicine Park, a powerful coming-of-age novel.

Set against the closing years of the Cold War, Constance Squires's debut novel introduces the family of Army Major Collins, as told through the eyes of Lucinda Collins-the vibrant, headstrong eldest daughter. Living on a military base, Lucinda feels displaced and isolated. Over time she finds her own tribe through rock and roll, and meets fellow Army brats, GIs, a ghost, and Syd, who knows how it goes. But after her father's final shocking betrayal, the only world she's ever believed in falls in like the Berlin Wall, leaving Lucinda to chart a new path.

In spare, heart-wrenchingly beautiful prose, Squires offers us a rare glimpse into the experiences and sacrifices of an American military family. Along the Watchtower is a powerful story that reveals what it really means to fight for the things we believe in and to defend the ones we love.Constance Squires is the author of the novels Live from Medicine Park and Along the Watchtower, and the forthcoming short story collection, Wounding Radius. Her fiction has appeared in Guernica, The Atlantic, Shenandoah, This Land, and numerous other magazines. Nonfiction has been featured on the NPR program Snap Judgment, and in the New York Times, Salon, The Village Voice, and others.

INTRODUCTION

When thirteen-year-old Lucinda Collins lands at the U.S. military base in Grafenwoehr, West Germany, in 1983, she already knows the drill: setting up new family quarters; easing turbulence between her parents; meeting her fellow Army brats but trying to remain at arms length, knowing she'll likely part from friends sooner rather than later. The nomadic Army life is all she knows, yet she longs for a place to which she can tether her memories, a plal#á