Jessica Lynch was born in West Virginia in 1983. She met a recruiter in 2000, and went to basic training in September 2001, after the terrorist attacks. She also attended Advanced Individual Training for her job as a unit supply specialist. She deployed to the Middle East for the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, serving as a Private First Class. On March 23, 2003, a convoy of the United States Army's 507th Maintenance Company and the 3rd Combat Support Battalion elements made a wrong turn and were ambushed near Nasiriyah. The vehicle that Lynch was in was hit by a rocket powered grenade, knocking her unconscious. She was taken prisoner by Iraqi forces, despite her injuries from the ambush. She was in an Iraqi hospital, where she was protected by kind doctors. The United States military was tipped off to her location, where they went to rescue her. (Along with the bodies of eight American soldiers.)

The author of this book (and several others) claim that Lynch was sexually assaulted while she was unconscious. She states that she has no recollection of that, but if she was unconscious, she would not. Given the history of war in general, that is a strong possibility, though the Iraqi doctors who treated her say they found no evidence of such. There were reports that she was tortured, but she says she was not, and all of her injuries appear to have been related to the vehicle being blown up and crashed. The doctor who protected her and his family were given humanitarian asylum in the United States, which was nice to learn. I wanted to like this book more than I did. I did appreciate learning about Lynch, who I remember hearing about in the news. I think that it is important to remember that there are women in combat roles and they face the same issues that men do. The potential for ambush, kidnap, and torture are real no matter what your gender is. Her story is important, even all of these years later. I wish that the author would have been more neutral in his writing, but the book was well written and an interesting read.