Lines in the Sand: An American Soldier's Personal Journey in Iraq

By F. Scott Service

Winner in the 2022 Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Adult Nonfiction
Winner of the Pacific Book Review Star for a Memoir of Excellent Merit

For F. Scott Service, a five-minute phone call one peaceful morning was all it took. Faced with the terrible dichotomy of his moral opposition to war and an innate sense of duty, little did he realize that when he was called for deployment in Iraq that his would be the journey of a lifetime.

A tour of duty destined to change him forever.

Witnessing the violence of a country ravaged by chaos and facing the disintegration of his life back home, his sojourn in Iraq forced him to fight a new battle, a battle within himself. What had once been a noble intention became a desperate struggle to salvage what was left of his humanity, an excursion into the darkest recesses of the human mind that ultimately led him to question everything he had come to believe.

Pushed to the edge, only then would he discover what lay within.

Author F. Scott Service recounts his wartime experience within an artfully lyrical epistolary composition. Transcribed from his handwritten journals, Lines in the Sand is a powerful exercise in self-exploration amid heart-wrenching loss and anguish.