CANR

• Alive Day: A Memoir - 2025 The Dial Press, New York, NY

• Karie Fugett website - https://kariefugett.com/

  Karie Fugett dropped out of high school at 17. At 20, her Marine husband was wounded at war, and she became a caregiver. At 24, she became a military widow. Today, Karie is an American author who holds a BA in creative writing from the University of South Alabama and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Oregon State University. Her debut memoir, Alive Day, is about an oft-overlooked reality of war: the experience of the many thousands of caregivers and spouses—mostly women, mostly young, mostly poor—whose lives have been shattered by battles fought against enemies abroad and against addiction at home.

• Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper - https://www.mariashriversundaypaper.com/i-am-a-military-widow-karie-fugett/

  I Am a Military Widow
  Karie Fugett on love, loss, and the overlooked toll faced by military and their loved ones.
  By Stacey Lindsay
  May 24, 2025
  Architects of Change
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  In the beginning of her memoir, Alive Day, Karie Fugett writes, “I couldn’t have known then that this was only the beginning. Soon, I would carry so much more than I ever asked to hold.”

  At 20, Karie married her boyfriend, Cleve, a Marine. In 2006, several months after the couple eloped, Cleve suffered injuries from an IED in Iraq, leaving him with PTSD, a traumatic brain injury, and an amputated leg at 21.

  Karie immediately took the full-time role of caregiver for her husband while he slipped into an addiction to his prescription opioids. Young and alone, she faced having to navigate the medical system and the Veterans Administration, all while receiving no support around her husband's debilitating addiction. Four years later, Cleve overdosed and died.

  In Alive Day, Karie tells her story with an intensity and beauty. Informed by searing first-hand experience and raw emotion, she details her experience while giving us a wide view of the under-told, overlooked tolls faced by our military and their loved ones: grief, loss, the burdens of caregiving, the lack of any true care system, the stigmas surrounding addiction. Her words are a must-read.

  And while Karie's pages plunge into the dark, they also radiate light—leaving us with a tangible sense of fortitude, commitment, and an enduring legacy of love.

  A CONVERSATION WITH KARIE FUGETT
  The story of your late husband, Cleve, is devastating and not an anomaly, as so many veterans face traumatic injuries, PTSD, and addiction. What do you wish more people were aware of?

  People don't realize how big of a care gap there is that family members and nonprofits fill in. The things that happened in the book were about a decade ago, so many things have changed since. The VA still has a long way to go, but it has made improvements. But right now, my concern is with some of the cuts talked about—VA cuts, for example. I am afraid of us backsliding into that because my experience was that while nonprofits and family members were filling in those care gaps, they weren't prepared for it. And the people who end up suffering are the veterans and then, of course, the family members because they also don't get the support they need.

  We see veterans on the news who are positive and patriotic and trying to stay optimistic. We say, 'Thank you for your service' and 'Support our troops,' but a lot of it is performative. People don't know what veterans and their families are really going through or what they actually need.

  You write, "There was an unspoken expectation that caregivers were supposed to keep their family members on track." Your story highlights the heavy toll caregivers take on.

  Yes, and we were so young. Many of us didn't even have kids, so we didn't even have the experience of parenting yet. We were fresh out of high school, for the most part, and overnight— literally overnight—thrown into this role of caregiver that we didn't ask for. We were willing to accept it, but there was no instruction manual, no guidance, no therapy—just a lot of pressure and expectation.

  When I think about how I felt back then, it was scary. I felt very much responsible for his life. I thought it would be my fault if anything happened to him. So, when he inevitably did pass away, that was something I had to grapple with.

  Cleve faced a lot of shame as he went through his addiction, which we see in our society with suffering veterans and people at large experiencing addiction. What do we need from our administration and society to break down these barriers and destigmatize addiction?

  All I can go off is my experience; I'm not an expert. But I do know that when it comes to addiction, one of the main reasons so many people die is because of isolation. If someone were with them or could talk about what they were going through and let someone know, 'I'm using today' or 'I'm afraid today,' so many lives could be saved. But in this country, in the military, we've created an environment where that isn't possible. People have to do things in isolation to protect their jobs and reputations. But it's that isolation that ends up killing them in the end. And what I mean by that is if someone is overdosing but someone is near them or with them, they can save their life. If someone is overdosing and no one is with them, they are going to die.

  A huge part of the problem is how we think addiction is morally corrupt, like there's something wrong with that person versus it being an illness that needs to be treated like anything else.

  The title of your book, Alive Day, links to a special moment in Cleve's life: After he was severely injured, a fellow vet said to him, "Happy Alive Day, man" to mark the day he'd been given another chance at life. What does Alive Day mean to you today, after all you've been through?

  When the Marine liaison said that to my husband, he had just gotten back, and we assumed that that was the beginning of the rest of his life and he was going to get better. Obviously, a few years later, he ended up passing away. What I've had to reconcile with is that his passing away gave me opportunities I never would have had otherwise. I would trade all of it to get him back and allow him to have that second chance to grow up and become whoever he was meant to be. I have changed so much, so I think about that: Who would he have been?

  It breaks my heart. I think about it all the time. It's been over a decade and I am still talking about it. But that's also my motivation, because he didn't get a chance to figure that out. He didn't have the opportunities that I have now, like an education, enough money to afford a home, and the chance to do and be what I want. And because he didn't, I feel that I need to do it for both of us. I want to do it for both of us.

  So, when I think of Alive Day, I feel like I'm carrying that legacy for both of us. It was taken away from him and passed on to me, and now I've got to do the best I can with my second chance.

  For someone who is going through a hard time, maybe they've lost somebody who served or lost someone who faced addiction, what do you hope your book offers them?

  I hope they feel seen. And I hope they feel like their labor and their difficult experiences are being recognized, finally. And that their story is heard.

  And I hope my story helps them make peace with any complicated emotions or actions they might have been feeling ashamed of and feel emboldened to stand up for themselves and their families.

  Mostly, I hope they feel a whole lot less alone.

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  Narrated by the Author
  Karie Fugett holds a BA from the University of South Alabama and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Oregon State University. Alive Day is her first book. You can learn more at kariefugett.com.

• Wrath-Bearing Tree - https://www.wrath-bearingtree.com/2025/08/03/new-interview-with-karie-fugett/

  New Interview with Karie Fugett
  August 3, 2025 by Lauren Kay Johnson
  Karie Fugett

  I was first introduced to Karie Fugett through her gorgeous, heart-wrenching 2019 Washington Post article “Love and War,” where she detailed her husband Cleve’s injury in Iraq, which ultimately led to an amputation, addiction to his prescribed painkillers, and multiple overdoses—including one that ended his life. Karie was widowed at age 24. I was taken with her story, her vulnerability in laying her grief bare, and also with her willingness to call out the institutions that failed Cleve as a wounded veteran and her as a full-time caregiver.

  After several years spent writing and advocating (and navigating a pandemic and a few other things), Karie published her memoir, Alive Day, this spring with The Dial Press. She was gracious enough to speak with me from the airport on the way to a book event. We chatted about military life, caregiving, writing, parenting, politics, pandemics, the fickle publishing industry, and, of course, her marvelous book.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Congratulations, first of all! Huge accomplishment. It’s been a long time coming for you, right? This has been in the pipeline for quite a while.

  Karie Fugett: It has been. I haven’t been writing it, like, every day since I started thinking about it or anything, but I did start thinking about it pretty seriously in like 2012. I didn’t know what I was doing, and at that point I was just kind of trying to record memories and practicing putting memories into scenes and just learning how to do creative writing. And then from there it started to get bigger and bigger.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: What was it initially that got you started writing? It sounds like you were doing some blogging during Cleve’s experiences. Did that kind of naturally transition into just writing to process?

  Karie Fugett: Yes, I hadn’t really written before that other than, like, moody middle school poetry. Nothing serious. Just emotions. And then when I was in the hospital, I met some other caregivers. A couple of them were writing blogs. We were able to keep in touch that way, and keep tabs with what each of us were going through. So I jumped on that bandwagon and very quickly found that it was a really great outlet for a lot of the things that I was feeling, because being in the hospital was really isolating. And even when I met other caregivers they would be moved to different hospitals, sometimes they’d be sent back home for a while, would be moved to different bases. So it wasn’t like we saw each other every single day, and this was kind of a way for us to keep in touch. And also to just feel like we were being heard, because we were in this weird situation that I had never heard of. All these things I was seeing. I was like, Oh, my God! I didn’t know that people lived like this. This is crazy to me. It kind of helped me blow off some steam. Keep in touch with people. When I didn’t have therapy, it was kind of my therapy.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: So was there a moment where you realized—You were kind of writing for yourself, and then there was a shift to Hey, there’s something here beyond me, whether as a means of sharing information or finding human connection, getting your voice out in the world. Was that a cognitive shift for you?

  Karie Fugett: When I first started writing it was just kind of a diary-type thing honestly, and the only people who were reading it were other caregivers, people that I knew. But after a few months, it was crazy; I would get up to 10,000 views a day. I was getting all these followers and emails. This was after a year or two. It just kind of blew up. And then there was a military spouses’ website [that] offered to feature my blog on their website along with a few other military wives. And I was like, Oh, people are interested in what’s happening here!

  I wasn’t familiar with essays, op-eds, whatever. I just immediately was like, maybe I should write a book about it. But I really didn’t know what I was doing or take it that seriously. [I] just noticed people were paying attention, and that there might be something to the story.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: The gestation period for a book is much longer than the gestation period for a baby.

  Karie Fugett: For sure. I mean for me, anyway. I feel like I have some friends that are like, “Book idea!” And then a few months later they’re turning in a manuscript. But I’m not like that.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Oh, I hate those people.

  Karie Fugett: I do too. I really do.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Mine was 12 years. And same thing: not, like, actively working on it eight hours a day every day, but the thinking about it, and the writing, and the rewriting, and the submitting, and then the rewriting again, and then submitting and rewriting, and then the crying and banging my head against the wall and wondering what I’m doing with my life.

  Karie Fugett: Right. There was a lot of existential dread, staring at walls, not doing anything productive. Probably more of that than writing If I’m being honest.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: So how does it feel now that it’s out in the world? How is this first—not even a month. It’s still really new for you. How has it been?

  Karie Fugett: It feels like a relief at this point. There’s so many unknowns. How are people going to respond? Especially with a memoir—is someone I write about going to recognize themselves, even though I changed all these details, and are they going to be upset? Which did happen once already, but I survived it, and it was fine. So now, a month out, people generally are responding well to it. And even the ones who don’t; it’s fine. We’re continuing on with our lives. It’s really not that big of a deal.

  I guess for a long time it was like that was the peak for me. It just felt like this really, really big deal, which also came with a lot of stress. And also I was unsure if I was even going to be able to finish it. There were points where I was like, Nope, not happening. I cannot do this. I’m burning it all. I’m gonna go be a flower farmer and hide in the country somewhere. But I did it! So, I’m proud of myself. I feel relieved.

  Right now I’m just kind of giving myself permission to relax for a minute. Because, too, after writing this, it became very clear to me that I haven’t had a lot of time to relax in my life, and part of that, especially recently, is self-imposed. So I’m like, you don’t always have to be productive, Karie! You don’t always have to be proving yourself. I’m taking a lot of naps right now and trying to spend time with my daughter. Thinking about where I want to live, maybe a business that I want to own.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Good for you. You have earned that, absolutely. Not that anyone needs to earn the right to take care of themselves and sleep. You mentioned that there were points where you felt like, Ahhh! And I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I imagine—I mean, this is such emotionally wrought content that you’re writing about. And living it was such a huge part of your life—physically, mentally, emotionally. And then in writing it, you have to go back there in so many ways. Can you talk a little about what that process was like? You discovered I have this book thing, and then you got into the writing of it. What did that feel like once you actually kind of comprehended what that meant

  Karie Fugett: It depended on the chapter or the story that I was writing. Sometimes it was a lot of fun. The parts in the book that are funnier or sillier or weirder I really enjoyed. The moments of joy between me and my husband I enjoyed thinking about in writing, because it felt like there wasn’t that much of it in the story, because all this other stuff was going on. And learning how to write creatively was really cool to me. I love turning memories into scenes and writing characters.

  But then there was a lot for me, especially from my childhood and when I was younger, that I realized I was still carrying a lot of shame over. Decisions I made that I blamed myself for; I just really wasn’t letting go of those things. I think it forced me to really look at those things again and think about them in a way that I hadn’t really. I’d been pushing it away and just too afraid to look at it. That was one of the reasons why it took so long, because there were certain parts of my life that I felt very stuck and wasn’t sure how to go there again. Luckily the end result—once I was able to do that, get it on paper and get past it—was actually very healing. I was able to forgive myself. I think I was able to visualize this—the word journey kind of makes me cringe—but in this journey that I went on and have a better understanding of why I made the choices that I made. And also it helped me remember I was a kid. I was so young. I think, as adults, sometimes we remember our past decisions. We hold on to them because that’s still who we are, still a decision we would make, and we carry that shame with us.

  Overall I think it’s been good for me. It’s helped me forgive myself, view myself with more compassion, and let go, which has helped a lot with this compounded trauma from over my life.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: I always talk about memoir as, like, a really long, in-depth self-therapy session. It’s often not comfortable to go back into those spaces and dig through the skeletons in your closet. But if you can do that effectively, not only does it make for compelling writing, vulnerable writing; it also can have that catharsis. And it sounds like it had that effect on you, too?

  Karie Fugett: It did. And what’s funny is that when I went to the MFA program—I think, when nonfiction writers, memoir writers, especially once you’ve been doing it for years, they really want to emphasize the craft of it. And as soon as you start talking about how it can be therapeutic, they get a little weird about that conversation for some reason. But I really think that’s a huge part of the process. Because if you’re going to access what you need to access for it to be a story that connects with people, you’re going to have to dig into some things that otherwise you could have ignored for the rest of your life. And that does something to you. That can change you if you’re honest with yourself and are willing to look at those things square in the face and analyze them and try to figure out what happened and try to understand yourself and the people around you, beyond the action.

  And that was the other thing—looking at people in my life that maybe upset me in the past and really sitting down and thinking: Why were they acting the way they were? What was going on in their life that caused them to treat me the way they did.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: You mentioned you were so young. You and Cleve both were in your early twenties going through this horrific experience, and an experience that put so much weight on both of your shoulders to just kind of, like the military says, suck it up and deal with it, figure it out. You carried this expectation that it was your job to be a caretaker, and you were doing your duty. You were doing your service to this country in taking care of Cleve, and he was doing his duty fighting, getting injured in the line of duty, and then focusing on recovery. Can you talk more about that that dynamic, and particularly what that meant, being so young and feeling the weight of that, and being in this community where everybody was trying to do this impossible thing?

  Karie Fugett: I was 20 when he was wounded. So, I’d only been an adult for a couple of years. And then I find myself in this situation—because of decisions that I made, but in this situation that is still just what I did not expect. And at that point, because I was married to him, it felt less like decisions I was making, and I was just sort of being told what to do. Which in some ways at that age, because I didn’t know what I was doing anyway, was a relief. I’m like, just tell me where to go! I don’t know what I’m doing right now. Then I would end up in these situations, though, because I was just sort of blindly following.

  You know how you hear stories about people following a GPS into a lake? How did you not see the lake? That’s how it felt. Like: go right, go left, go backwards. And you’re just trying to please these people that are kind of scary and intimidating and control your paycheck and your housing and everything in your life and just seem way smarter than you. So, why would you ever question what they’re saying? But months go by, and suddenly you’re looking around, and you’re like, something is not right. How did I get here? And not having the brain—literally not having the brain cells—to figure out how to get back out of it. Who to ask, what to ask. Especially when it came down to PTSD, TBI, and addiction. Where does one end and one begin, and how do you fix it? How do you even have time to think about it when you’re worrying about a leg that is infected or being amputated. It was just . . . it was a lot.

  I think at the time I was just kind of following my orders. And then, by the time I was thinking something’s wrong, I was so in it that I just kept following. It really took a couple of years before I started getting angry, but at that point it was kind of too late. He was overdosing. At that point I was like, He’s going to die. He almost died. What is going on?

  Lauren Kay Johnson: That’s in so many ways representative of the way that the military operates. It’s this “We’re gonna tell you what to do!” You’re joining the community; your life is dictated by us, and there’s not a lot of encouragement of free will. They set it up in this environment and then if you get into uncharted territory—like you were in relatively early in the post-9/11 conflicts—there’s not a manual for how to handle that. There’s resources available, but it requires proactivity to seek them out and advocates to help connect you with the right resources, and that all just sounds like it wasn’t there in any kind of accessible manner for you.

  Karie Fugett: I don’t know if it’s still the case, but there was this sort of underlying assumption that if you told them too much was wrong, you could get in trouble, and it was hard to know where the line was. Like, if you say you’re addicted—What kind of details can I give you before you start saying it’s my fault? There was this underlying thing that we kind of knew they were there to help us—mostly. But if we said the wrong thing they could absolutely ruin our lives. So it was scary to really be open and vulnerable and really talk about how bad things felt.

  Also, you just want to prove yourself. You want to prove that you’re strong enough, capable. At least that’s how I felt. My husband did, too. He wanted to prove he’s a Marine. He joined the Marine Corps. He can handle it. He’s fine. He wasn’t fine, nor was I, and by the time we realized neither of us were fine it was an absolute chaotic mess.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: One of the things I loved about your book is we get all of that raw emotion, and the sense of overwhelm, and also the call to do your duty and to support this person that you love however you can. It’s heavy stuff, but you do have these moments of levity. And a lot of that is based around really beautiful relationships that you’ve had in your life, the kind of transient life that you’ve led through childhood and the military. Not in the traditional military sense; you weren’t moving around from base to base, but you were hospital to hospital, in kind of these micro communities. Can you talk about the role that that friendship has played in your life, particularly your healing process?

  Karie Fugett: It was huge. Not just friendships, but mentorship later on. Really, when I think about the moments in my life where I saw a beam of light, hope that I could get out of this darkness that I was in, it always involved someone being in my corner helping me out of it. I don’t think there’s any point where I saved myself on my own. I’m not going to discredit myself and say that I didn’t make decisions and work hard and all of that. But all along the way, I just got so freaking lucky with human beings who were just dropped into my life and were exactly what I needed in that moment. Everything from during the deployment—The wife that I lived with while they were deployed, she was just exactly who I needed to help get my feet wet in this military wife life. Even though it was only a couple of months, all the things that you hear about military wives, how they’ll drop everything for each other, how they bond so quickly—it’s all true, at least with her. As soon as we started connecting, it was like, this is my best friend; we’d do anything for each other. I’m helping raise her baby while our husbands are overseas. It just happened so quickly, and she, without question, packed her baby in the car and drove me to DC [to be with Cleve in the hospital].

  I’ve needed to crash on people’s couches because I just could not do the basic things it takes to survive for periods of time. And I just needed someone to take care of me for a little bit. The [military] widows—They came into my life right when I needed them. I needed to feel less alone. I needed to see other people doing things that I was afraid to do. It’s all been relationships.

  Even once I got to college, it was the teacher who was the mentor and said that she saw something in my writing. I really just saw myself as a high school dropout. I felt like a wannabe. I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to do this, and I could tell that she was serious. That was huge for me.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Reading the book it felt like, in a lot of ways, where the military in an ideal world was supposed to be there to support you, it was these relationships that were meeting that need. And also you give a big shout out to nonprofits that have historically really filled that gap in care and support, both financially and emotionally.

  Karie Fugett: Yes, those nonprofits keep people alive. End of story. There’s a point in the book where I’m talking to someone about moving. And he’s like, “Oh, you might as well just go through the nonprofit because it’s gonna take longer if you go through the military.” I wrote that casually. People bring that up so much now, though; they’re like, “I cannot believe they were like, let’s just dump it on the nonprofit!” But everything did take really long. And a nonprofit, they’d be like, what do you need? Sign your name on this piece of paper, and we’ll process it in a couple of days. They understood that there were real urgencies and they were really quick to respond. They, at least back then, really didn’t ask a lot of questions. They just wanted to help, and it was huge.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Particularly thinking about the moment that we’re in right now, where people are in need of extra support in a lot of ways. If folks read your book and they’re like, “I want to do something!”—What is your call-to-action for them? Is there a nonprofit that you would direct them to? Somewhere where they can get informed and provide support?

  Karie Fugett: I actually think that the smaller nonprofits I prefer, the local nonprofits. Especially these days when it feels like there’s so much going on, it feels very big and hard to know how to help. For me, personally, what I’ve realized is when you’re trying to question how you can make a difference, you should look at your own community. There’s veterans everywhere. There’s probably a nonprofit in your community, or a VA, VFW, something like that. Reach out to them and see what they need and start there. None of us can fix everything, but it’s those community-level things that I think individuals can make the biggest difference at. And they’re the ones who really need that help.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: I’ve been following you for a while, since the Washington Post piece. One of the things that I connected to on your journey, because it paralleled mine in a lot of ways, is thinking about writing a memoir, writing about your life, when your life is still very much being lived and comes with these big shifts in external things and personal things that inevitably change your perspective—like becoming a parent and going through a global pandemic. All these big things. Did you feel that as you were writing? Since this has been a pretty long haul for you, did you have an experience where you felt like, I want to maintain the original rawness of this, but now I have this older, wiser perspective where I can reflect back. Were there things you changed, things you added?

  Karie Fugett: I definitely did probably feel the biggest shift during COVID, partly because of the pandemic, but also because I was pregnant with my first and only child. So those were two sort of monumental things. I was in Oregon. We were isolating. My kid’s dad—we had a farm, I had to stay in an apartment 45 minutes away. We weren’t able to be together a lot. So I literally isolated by myself for days and days and days at times.

  It was weird. My baby shower was via zoom. It was all weird. So, I wasn’t writing. I was just sitting around thinking, I’m never going to write this because it felt like my brain was changing. It just felt like there was no way my brain was going to be able to do it ever again. And then I came out the other side, and I was changed, and having to continue writing this thing.

  Interestingly enough, though, once I was able to get back to it and I realized, oh, my brain can make sentences again, and I started to get into the groove, it was actually easier. I don’t know if it was that I had been sitting around by myself obsessing over this for two whole years—because at that point I had already sold it, too. I sold it February 25th or something, 2020, and then I went to Kenya March 4th, and then everything started to shut down while I was overseas, and it was terrifying. But then I came back and was talking to movie producers, and everything was this big, cool, exciting thing. Then everything started to shut down, and then I got pregnant, and then I got depressed, and then I was just like, Do you want your money back? Because I’m not going to write this book. There’s no way I can do this. It just felt so impossible.

  But my editor was like, No, just take two years off. There’s a pandemic, and the whole industry is completely fucked right now. It’ll be fine. So I did that, and worried the whole time. And then when I came out the other end, it was actually easier to write some of it. What I was saying earlier about how writing it helped me forgive myself in a lot of ways, let go of a lot of shame—I think having a daughter also helped with that. I looked at her, and I was like, Oh, my God! I was a baby once. I started to think about all the mistakes she’s going to make, and all of the things that she’s going to regret at some point. And it was just like, I’m still going to love you unconditionally. Nothing you could do could ever make me stop loving you. And then I realized, why can’t I give myself that? All of us deserve that. So that took some of the weight off and allowed me to write some of the things that felt really hard before that to even just admit and put on paper.

  I will say, too, at that point, because I was a mom, I wasn’t overthinking it, either. I was just like, I’m breastfeeding, and I’m writing a book, and there’s a pandemic. Take it or leave it. I sent it to my editor. She ended up loving it, and I was like, Are you sure? So yeah, having a kid will definitely change you. So will a pandemic, apparently.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: I feel like we should get a panel together of people who have had a book project interrupted by the pandemic and having kids. That’s two major, epic universal shifts. It’s weird.

  Karie Fugett: It is. Even the way it affected my book publication. When it was originally sold, they were like, this is the next Educated. This is the next Wild. They were really blowing it up, and it went to auction with 15 editors. It got a huge advance for what it is. It made no sense to me, but they were really blowing it up. Producers were calling. It felt like this really big thing. The pandemic just squashed the shit out of it. And part of it is because memoir kind of just fell in popularity and was replaced with things like romance, fantasy.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Because life sucks! Nobody wants to read about real life!

  Karir Fugett: Right? Who wants to read about my depressing-ass life when they could be reading about fairies having sex? That’s basically what it came down to. And I think, too, TikTok really blew up and that started to shape the industry in a way that nobody expected. So, just that timeline—selling it and then publishing it five years later and seeing how the book industry can morph in a matter of years based on politics and pandemics and social media.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Yes, the political realm is a whole other layer of that too. There’s so much pummeling us all the time. It’s so hard to rise above the noise. There was a bit of a buffer time for you to kind of recalibrate your expectations, and also you had a few other things going on in your life, like raising a small human. Are you happy with how things turned out? Do you wish those producers would call you back?

  Karie Fugett: I mean, I do. You know, everybody’s motivated by something. Some people are motivated by money. Some people are motivated by popularity. For me, I think I’m motivated by feeling like I was successful at doing whatever I did. The problem with that, though, is my idea of success is, like, best-of-the-best-of-the-best, which is ridiculous. I’ve never been able to be the best of the best, and to hold myself to that standard is insane. But it’s just hard for me to accept less than that, always, even though it’s easier now that I’m getting older, because I know it’s ridiculous.

  But yeah, there was definitely a moment I could see what was happening in the industry. The publishing industry pushes books, right? They choose what’s going to be the next big thing, at least to an extent. They’re going to put all their resources behind certain books and not others. I could tell that mine was being bumped down on the list, and it hurt. I was like, Oh, God, I probably wrote it wrong! I’m a shitty writer. I knew it! I started to beat myself up. I ended up talking to my agent and editor about it, and they helped me understand that the industry is different. And this is just how things are now. Wild and Wrangled, that cowboy romance series—That’s the hot shit at our press now, and that’s fine. That’s what people want.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Is that your next project, in that realm?

  Karie Fugett: I’m not saying that I didn’t think about it. I was like, Well, how much money do you all get for that? Sounds really fun. Well, not fun—I would be totally awkward with it. But, like, low stakes. You just write it and have a nice sleep that night. That’s not my experience with the memoir.

  I will say, though, after a month or so I am happy with it. I mean, did I expect it to be more successful? Do I get bummed when I go into a bookstore and it’s not there? Sure. However, I have gotten so many messages from people saying how much it meant to them, for all different reasons. And even just saying, like, this is my favorite book this year. What more could I ask for? That’s such a huge deal to me, even if it’s just a couple of people. I’m also trying to remind myself where I came from, and none of this was anything within the realm of possibility for me at one point. Mostly I just feel really lucky.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Is there a particular message or element of your story that you hope people will latch onto or take away from reading your book?

  Karie Fugett: I’m thinking about how we might be going war again soon. And the way that there tends to be very specific views on what a soldier is or what a soldier’s wife is, and [people] kind of put them in this box. I hope that the people who read this, especially the ones who have never been in the military, when they think about going to war, that they are now thinking about who is being sent. That it’s a very specific population in our country. And of course that’s not everybody, but it is true that recruiters go into poorer towns. They go into places with military bases. They go into places where they have a higher chance of recruiting people, and you’ll have a higher chance of recruiting people if they need things like healthcare and housing and livable wage, because then they don’t have access to that otherwise.

  If we do end up going to war, I just hope people remember that it’s just kids. It’s these kids that often didn’t have other options. And they’re trusting their government to take care of them and then sending them to these bullshit wars. And their only options are to either do it or to say fuck you, and then go back to where they came from, where they didn’t have any options. That’s what I’m thinking about a lot right now. I’m angry about it. I’m sad. I hope that people who read it humanize the people fighting.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: One of the lines that that really stuck with me is: “Cleve had to sign up for war to get the things he needed to live.” That just says so much. It was fascinating to me—fascinating in a horrible way. It’s a cyclical thing: You look at people who join the military, and they’re much more likely to join if they have a relative who served as well. Parents and siblings. While you didn’t fit that exact mold, your dad was in the military as well.

  Karie Fugett: And my grandfather.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: And your grandfather! And part of the motivation was to be able to support a family. But then it also ended up not being compatible with family life. So, there’s this weird push-and-pull dynamic that happens in there too.

  Karie Fugett: Yes, there is. And that’s actually something I didn’t even really recognize until I started getting closer to the end of the book and started really probing, like, what am I trying to get across? Because I had a lot of things that I was like, You need to hear this! You need to know this! I need to say this! But then I was trying to distill exactly why I needed people to hear this, and I started doing more research and looking at the history of this war and the history of the military. I didn’t know that there are certain communities where recruiters don’t go. I just thought they went everywhere. They were at my school, so I just assumed they’re in all the schools. It’s not true. Some schools, kids never see a recruiter. It’s just not part of their life. That blew my mind. And then things like the ASVAB [military aptitude test]—certain schools make kids think that they have to take it, even though they don’t. I have a lot of friends who went to schools like that, where they were like, “Everyone, go to the cafeteria and take the ASVAB!” And they thought they just had to.

  That’s another example of the major difference between the haves and have-nots—people who have access to all the things they need to survive pretty easily and then people who know growing up their whole life, I’m not going to be able to get that unless I make the right decision. That could lead individuals down paths that they otherwise never would have had to go down. That’s one of the things I learned about myself when I was writing the book, too. I was like, Okay, what decisions could I have made? And I’m thinking of the other decisions, and those very easily could have just ended up down some other crappy path. You’ve got these kids that are like, here’s three options that all suck, pick one.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: Or maybe you don’t know the extent of the suck of them. You’re making decisions based on the knowledge that you have at that particular time of your life—which as a 17-year-old is not generally a ton of worldly knowledge. Especially when the story that you’re getting is from a recruiter or from a particular news channel. The value of stories like yours is in presenting another perspective and a rounder picture of what that means. I consider myself fairly informed when it comes to military and veterans’ issues, and I learned a ton from your book. I just want to say how much I appreciate all that you shared, being willing to be vulnerable. It blows my mind some of the things, like having to fight for the disability rating. I knew on some level that is a fight for a lot of people, but Cleve’s in particular. It just seems so asinine that you had to justify that these were service-connected things. I was getting so angry reading it, and I think that’s a good thing. I want people to get angry.

  Karie Fugett: Yeah, I do, too. I think one of the best moments that I’ve had since writing it is the first reader who wrote me, like: I don’t know anyone in the military. I have no experience with the military. I’m not connected to the military at all. And I picked this up for XYZ reason, and I wasn’t really even sure if I’d like it. But she was like, I have a whole new perspective on people who serve. I have new respect for them. I didn’t realize how privileged I was to be completely detached from it. That “why” that I was searching for—this is why, so that people like this can have access to this world and have a better understanding of the military industrial complex, the way certain groups of people just kind of get sucked into it. And how, in my opinion, that’s all part of a bigger plan. They know what they’re doing. If everyone had healthcare, if everyone had enough money to live, if everyone had a beautiful home, who the fuck would join the military? Very few people.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: We wouldn’t need a warrior class.

  Karie Fugett: No, especially not grunts. Cannon fodder, honestly. They know that these are people with no education. Their purpose is to have a gun, be a body on the ground. They need as many of those as possible that aren’t going to ask a lot of questions and are just going to do as they’re told and hopefully even feel excited about it. And proud of it. It takes a certain sort of person from a certain background. That’s depressing. I started to get so depressed the more I researched it. I was so clueless when I was in it.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: It is depressing, and it’s kind of one of those unspoken secrets of America. You reveal that in such an emotional—and just human—way. And then also the because the carryover of that into the promises that are made when people make this commitment to be that cannon fodder that are then not always upheld. There’s barriers in the way of getting access to benefits.

  Karie Fugett: Fucking take care of them well, without them having to beg for it.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: I don’t think that this was explicitly mentioned in your book, or if it was in an article, but you can’t get remarried and maintain your survivor’s benefits. Is that correct?

  Karie Fugett: Correct. And now that I have a daughter, too, it just puts me in a weirder position. Because it’s a lot of money. [It’s] one of the things that me and another widow were talking about, how fucked up it is. People have argued with us like, well, why would they keep giving you money if you get remarried? There’s a lot of different reasons I just don’t think that it should depend on whether or not you’ve got another man in your life. It just feels very sexist, because widows are more often than not women. So that’s usually who it’s affecting. But not just that; these are women who very often are widowed so young, and during that time that they were adults, they were focusing their lives around their husband’s work.

  I just had military wife, very young, at a reading come up to me, and she was like, “How do you prioritize yourself when you’re a military wife?” I didn’t really have an answer, because I also just feel like that’s something that women in general struggle with, especially once you become a mother and you’ve got all these other things going on and it’s so easy to prioritize literally everything but yourself. So, you have to constantly just choose it, I guess.

  But anyway, you’ve got these women who are that young. Their whole life has been about supporting their husband, and then their husband died. Their sense of purpose, everything went with it. And now they are starting from square one. Do they go to school? Do they start a business? Do they, whatever? But how many years does it take for them to do that? And then you add in the grief and any trauma that was involved. Therapy costs money! Even with health insurance, it costs money. And I guess in my opinion, as long as I have to be in therapy for the shit I went through. Y’all can pay me.

  Lauren Kay Johnson: I mean, that’s a significant chunk of your life and your soul that was dedicated to the military.

  Karie Fugett: And it takes a long time to get back on your feet. I would argue that just now I’m starting to feel normal-ish, or like my own person. I found my own path. But it took so much work to get to this point, to where I feel stable enough. I finally feel like I think I’m gonna be okay.

• Janet Ratcliffe - https://janeratcliffe.substack.com/p/always-something-beautiful-out-there

  Always Something Beautiful Out There: A Conversation with Karie Fugett
  On war, being a caregiver to a wounded husband at twenty-one, self-care, waking up to trauma, learning to like yourself, and the healing magic of friendship
  Jane Ratcliffe
  May 15, 2025
  Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.

  I can’t remember when I first became aware of Karie Fugett’s remarkable writing on war but once I did, I devoured everything she wrote. My parents grew up on London during WWII and, in turn, I grew up with war in my blood. Karie’s level-headed presentation of the cost of war not only on the soldiers but also the spouses, who all too often become caregivers, the family, friends, and the country went straight into the marrow of my bones. She told the truth — with empathy and eyes-wide-open clarity and gentleness and thoroughness and a longing for all of this war madness to change.

  Karie’s new memoir Alive Day is astoundingly beautiful. In it, Karie guides us through a childhood of abuse into a loving but complicated marriage to her grade-school sweetheart, Cleve, who joins the Marines and is soon enough deployed to Iraq. Within months, his Humvee is hit by an IED and Cleve is flown to Walter Reed with a serious leg injury. The doctors try to save it, putting Karie, barely in her twenties, in charge of some gruesome and grueling care but in the end, it needs to be amputated. Given pills for pain, Cleve quickly becomes addicted and Karie, realizing he’s also dulling PTSD, tries in vain to convince both doctors and loved ones he needs help. By twenty-four, Karie is a military widow.

  Alive Day has garnered a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and was selected for Book of the Month. Karie’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. She holds a BA in creative writing from the University of South Alabama and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Oregon State University. She lives in Alabama with her daughter.

  It was such a pleasure to speak with Karie. I hope you enjoy our conversation!

  xJane

  ⭐️ Karie is generously gifting three readers an autographed copy of Alive Day! If you’d like to be one of the recipients, please add “ALIVE” after your comment. The winners will be chosen at random on Monday, May 19th and notified by Substack Direct Chat. I’m excited for all of you! (Shipping is limited to the United States) ⭐️

  Karie and Cleve, Marine Corps Ball
  Your book really drives home the fact that the majority of soldiers and their partners, who often end up as caregivers, are young: early twenties. You frequently refer to yourself and those around you as “just kids.” And you write: “I know now that Cleve’s death, and every casualty of any war is anticipated. Everything from widow stipends to prosthetic legs is part of a very large budget. And people like me and my husband—poor, uneducated, young—are chosen by recruiters who seek out the economically disadvantaged, knowing that those kids are more likely to enlist and stand on the front lines during wartime. Cleve and I were chosen, and we played our parts.” This is both heartbreaking and infuriating. Can you talk more about how it’s kids who are fighting our wars and kids who are acting as caretakers to the wounded soldiers who make it home and kids who are war widows and kids who are single parents?

  When you look at how the military is structured, and you look at officers, those are usually people who have an education, which means they're probably a little bit older. The kids who are fresh out of high school, who don't have any college under their belt, they don't really have any skill set for the labor force—they end up the grunts, they're the infantry, which means they're going to be the ones on the ground in the thick of it if we're at war. Obviously, there are people of all ages that end up wounded and dying. But when we were in the hospital, the vast majority of the people who were there were our age—and we were twenty and twenty-one.

  It’s mind boggling to think the age of enlistment in the military is seventeen! What's the age when our brains are fully formed?

  Twenty-four. The year I was widowed. I thought about that a lot when I was writing the book, too. Because as it was all happening, I had a lot of guilt about the way I was handling some of the things in real time. I had a lot of anger. I was depressed. Acting out at certain times, and not living up to my values, if you will. So I really beat myself up about it.

  Later, when I was revisiting all this stuff, I was thinking I was so young. Most of that happened before my brain was fully developed. Then the year that supposedly it was happening—I buried my husband. And that’s so common.

  There was no rule book. I really didn't have much of a support system in the form of family. So I was just winging it. Things were coming at me—I was like, “I'm going to do this, and we'll see if that works.”

  I finally made peace with knowing I handled everything the best that I could.

  Cleve gets the Purple Heart
  One of the other things that struck me was the way it was almost mandated that your life fold completely into Cleve’s and into the demands put on you by the military, especially when Cleve came home injured. You had to set aside your dreams to take on this role of caregiver, which carries so so so much responsibility. You write: “I understand now that the military relies on young spouses like me as cheap—sometimes free—labor. Military brass knows what to say to make young women think their labor is their duty.”

  At that time, they weren't paying caregivers anything. A nonprofit would give us checks every once in a while to fill that gap. Eventually the military—I want to say a few years after that—finally got with the program and decided they should be paying these women for their labor. But at the beginning, the caregivers were guinea pigs.

  How did you cope with that? I don't think they gave you any training or anything, right? They didn't say, “this is how you care for your seriously injured husband.”

  They handed me a pamphlet at one point about PTSD. A general like, “Look out for these things,” but it was under the context of his care. It wasn't talking about how it could affect me. Later in the book one of the nurses says, “Oh, you could have secondary PTSD.” Looking back I think I just had PTSD. But secondary PTSD is a thing. It’s caregiver burnout. A lot of caregivers do experience that. They weren’t talking about it beforehand.

  I was being told this is my responsibility to take care of him, these are the things that we want you to do. I felt overwhelmed by it, it felt like failing. I had no understanding of what was going on with me mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. Now I have a much better understanding of things like PTSD, depression, anxiety, because I’ve done the research and had therapy. Back then it was just like, “there's something wrong with me. I should be stronger than this.” It’s a lot of whipping yourself.

  Your body must have been in overdrive, because you were in a state of constant worry, constant hyper-vigilance. Were you sleeping? Were you able to rest? Were you able to calm and care for yourself? Or were you focused on Cleve all the time?

  Because of the way I grew up, I was used to being in a hyper-vigilant state. So in some ways it was perfect for me, because I almost thrive on that high that you get when there's an emergency. I say thrive... it feels like I'm thriving, but it's really spending every ounce of energy at once and then feeling very exhausted later. But when there's an emergency, I'm like, “okay, this is what we need to do.” I go into action mode. So I was depending on that a lot.

  I was depending on a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms, like overeating. I was drinking too much. I took Cleve’s pills every once in a while. And I poured myself into this idea that my purpose was to be his caregiver, and even if I burnt myself completely out doing it, it was worth it.

  There was a point I was on sleeping pills because I was starting to have nightmares and staying up at night. Cleve had sleep apnea due to some of his injuries so he snored really loud and would wake up kicking the air with weird dreams. So I was not sleeping very well. And I was eating a lot of junk food. Smoking a lot of cigarettes.

  Do you have different care mechanisms now?

  I do. How good I am at practicing them depends on how things are going on in my life. Working out regularly is huge. Meditation can be huge, even though it’s difficult for me to get into that. When I do it daily, it’s almost miraculous how much of a change I see with my anxiety. Talk therapy.

  I'm on medication now, which is something that I avoided for a long time. I didn’t start until my daughter was born. She’s four now. I’d convinced myself that I wasn’t truly better or healthy if I had to take meds. Like, I needed to figure it out some other way.

  But I was a roller coaster. I would have a period of time where I was doing pretty well, and then I would get overwhelmed and fall back into those bad habits that I mentioned. Medication doesn’t solve everything. Having healthy practices in your daily life is also important. But it made me realize how high-strung I had been. I didn’t truly realize how bad my anxiety was until I took a med. I was like, “oh, this is really nice.”

  Karie and Cleve
  You slowly discover you’re carrying your own trauma from things that pre-date your marriage but also the experiences of being married to first an active and then seriously injured soldier. You write, “I didn’t want people to think I was taking attention away from Cleve. He was the one who had gone to war. Anything I was going through, comparatively, felt silly. I wonder now what about my PTSD was “secondary.”” Can you talk about your journey toward understanding you were also dealing with trauma?

  It took me way too long. Especially considering all the therapists I’d talked to along the way. I was thirty, maybe. When I was taking care of Cleve, I didn’t know much about mental illness. The whole time that I was taking care of my husband, I thought you had to have been at war in order to have PTSD. That was black and white in my mind back then.

  When that nurse told me about secondary PTSD, that was the first time I’d ever heard that. It was the first time I’d considered that it could be affecting me too. I did feel very guilty about thinking about accepting that because it felt like I was taking away from what the focus should have been, which was taking care of the war-wounded hero

  It was when I was getting a college education and taking sociology, psychology, and having conversations with other people who knew more than me, that I realized maybe I should do more research on this.

  Then it hit me, like, I might have been traumatized at six. I’ve been carrying this a long time. After that, a lot of things started to click into place, and that’s when my journey to forgiving myself started. If the trauma for me started at six years old and no one ever told me how to deal with that, I always figured it out on my own, how could I blame myself?

  Not to say that I don’t take responsibility for my actions, obviously I do. But I’m able to be a little softer with myself and not be hard on myself for the things that I did, that I don’t love.

  Is there a formal practice you have for that?

  Writing was huge. I know it’s cliché to talk about memoir and healing. But it is healing. For me anyway. Being able to look at myself in the past and think about that version of me in the form of a character in a book, it turned me into more of a separate being. I was able to look at what was going on a little more objectively, instead of feeling like it was all part of me.

  At first, I was like, “I did that. It’s my fault.” But when I looked at myself as this younger person who’d experienced these things, I was like, “This is just a human being trying to figure it out, who went through a bunch of things that she didn’t know how to handle. That person deserves forgiveness.”

  When Cleve came back, you got lots of physical medical support but there was nothing offered for mental health. Why do you think, the moment the soldiers are back, the military isn’t immediately providing mental health support for them and their spouses?

  They’ve improved a lot over the last ten to fifteen years, especially in those areas like opioids, mental health care, taking PTSD seriously, taking traumatic brain injury seriously. It took people dying, and people talking about it in the news, and people getting angry for them to finally start addressing these things.

  Early on, maybe they weren't fully aware. But then I'm like, “this isn't your first war, military.” I don't know how much credit I want to give them.

  Do you think it would have made a difference when Cleve came back if there had been readily available mental health care support for the two of you?

  Yes! If they were like, “Okay, you get a therapist. And you're going to be on pain meds for a long time so we need to have someone monitoring your usage.” If right out of the gate, I’d had some training to not take his outbursts so personally. I took everything personally, like it was my fault, and that weighed me down pretty quickly. And him, too.

  Cleve becomes addicted to pain killers. Doctors told you it was unethical to take him off pain meds altogether. Yet he was clearly taking too many and showing myriad signs of addiction. You often had to fight against what Cleve and the doctors were telling you and listen to your own voice, a voice that had been shut down, that knew Cleve was addicted. What was the process like of learning to trust yourself and your knowings more deeply?

  It is really hard, especially when you're dealing with a system like the military that's so big and powerful. They control everything from your paycheck to where you live. It's intimidating. If they're suggesting that one thing is the truth, and continuing to say that, then you start to question yourself. Especially at that age. I’d been around drugs some, but I didn't know what the difference was between addiction and someone who has an infected leg, or the difference between symptoms of addiction and PTSD. A lot of those symptoms are overlapping.

  At that young age, being in such a powerful system with all of these people telling me that it's fine, even though my gut knew that something wasn't right, I did not have the self-confidence to assert my truth. I wanted to prove that I was a good caregiver, that I was doing my job well.

  I would imagine, it must have been all men you were going up against.

  Yes. A few female nurses. But even most of the nurses were men. I did not have any tools for that at all. I did mention my concerns during one of Cleve’s appointments, and was brushed off. I was like, “Okay, maybe I am overreacting.”

  Then I would notice things him passing out and his cigarette singeing holes into his pants. And I'm like, “I don't think this is normal.” So I would mention it again, but it kept getting pushed to the side. And again, I didn't have the confidence to march in there and be like, “Fucking do something.”

  Karie with military widows in New Orleans
  I don't know how you held it together as much as you did. Because you moved so often growing up, it was difficult for you to form lasting friendships and you often felt alone. Based upon the friendships you depict in this book and your abundant acknowledgements, it seems that’s no longer the case. What role does friendship play in your life?

  Huge, huge role in my healing process. When I was younger I thought that people didn't like me. In retrospect, I realize I didn't like myself very much, so I couldn't understand how someone would like me, and that affected the way I interacted with people. I was afraid to talk to people. I was afraid to be myself. I was awkward. I was angry. I was all these things that no one wants to be around.

  If I’d not worried so much about whether people liked me, I would have had plenty of friends. I know that is because once I got older and went to college, I wasn't as worried about people liking me, and whether I was weird, and immediately I was like, “Oh, my gosh! People want to talk to me!” I was attracting people that understood me, that were similar to me, and it became almost easy. I think the key is, you have to like yourself.

  At first you hate the men who hurt Cleve and want them dead. But over time, you find yourself wondering what their names are, if they have families, what their lives are like. And how many of their loved ones have been hurt or killed. What impact did this humanizing of the enemy have on how you see the world? And how you see yourself?

  It's morphed over the years. Back then, I was ignorant about a lot of things, and if I saw something on the news, my parents watched Fox, I assumed it was fact. Certain people were called terrorists and were dehumanized. To me, it was, “they’re trying to kill us, and they're the bad guys.” And that's it.

  I didn't really think it through until I had this wounded husband. Once I was in the hospital with Cleve, and getting a little older, and had way too much time to myself, I started thinking about it. And I was like, “there are two sides to this. People are dying over there too.” At the time I didn’t realize how many.

  Even then, though, I was just starting to really consider our role in this war. [Karie tears up] Sorry, this actually makes me emotional. The older I get, the more upset I get about the effect it had on Iraq and the civilians there. There was a point where I was writing this book and was like, “I can’t write this anymore. Why does this point of view even matter when we caused that amount of suffering over there?” It’s taken a lot of therapy.

  When Cleve was in the hospital, that’s when I started to do more research about who is fighting these wars for us. Who does war benefit? Why are we going to war? What’s the point of doing this? I realized that there are really rich people who make a lot of money off it and those people pay our politicians to make choices in their favor, including going to war. They send recruiters to poor communities like mine, where they know these kids don’t have other opportunities, or they send them to military bases because they know these kids are around the military already and are more likely to join. That’s the strategy behind it. I realized that it's worthy of talking about even if I'm still upset about our role.

  I’m glad you are talking about it, Karie. So much is hard right now, where are you finding joy?

  It's usually simple things. My boyfriend and I have this little reading club between us.

  Oh, I love that.

  It's almost always things like sci-fi, or not too serious. Doing that before bed every night is nice. Spending time with people who are important to me, especially ones where I don’t have to worry about looking a certain way, speaking a certain way, and I can totally be myself. Lots of laughing.

  Getting outside. Today is beautiful. I had the door open and the air off, and let some sunshine and fresh air come in. And remembering that even when things are hard, there is always something beautiful out there that you could be focusing on. And it's okay to enjoy that, too.

Fugett, Karie. Alive Day: A Memoir. Dial. May 2025. 336p. ISBN 9780593231081. $30. MEMOIR

The pain of war is not limited to those who serve in the field. In this raw and searing memoir, Fugett describes meeting her husband Cleve as an adolescent. After some years as friends, they reconnect and marry before his deployment to Afghanistan with the U.S. Marines. While both Fugett and Cleve struggle with their destructive issues and maturity, much of the book focuses on Cleve returning wounded from Afghanistan. From drug use to hospitalizations and struggles with the labyrinthine system of Veterans Affairs, this book demonstrates the toll that war takes on those left to pick up the pieces. While an emotionally difficult read, readers will greatly appreciate the strength it takes veterans and their families to overcome their experiences, even though they can sometimes lose themselves in the process.

VERDICT: This is an essential and unique memoir that should be read by those wanting a better understanding of military families' difficulties and the ramifications of sending loved ones to war. Collections with PTSD memoirs should also consider this work.—Maria Ashton-Stebbings

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Library Journals, LLC
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Ashton-Stebbings, Maria. "Alive Day: A Memoir." WebOnlyReviewsLJ, vol. 150, no. 3, 21 Mar. 2025, p. 1. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A833062339/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b00dc442. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.

Fugett, Karie ALIVE DAY Dial Press (NonFiction None) $29.00 5, 6 ISBN: 9780593231081

A harrowing account of a military spouse's tragic journey.

With plainspoken, precise prose, Fugett narrates her own improbable journey alongside that of her childhood crush-turned-husband, Cleve: "Young, poor, we followed the breadcrumbs we found, and they led us to the Marine Corps." As her own family fragmented, in Alabama, she reconnected with Cleve at age 20, startled by his transformation into a combat veteran: "The prospect of a second chance thrilled me. I believed in soulmates, and I couldn't help but wonder if Cleve was mine." They married impulsively (and, like many soldiers, from economic need). Cleve was grievously wounded by an IED three weeks into his second deployment. She notes that the titular day for today's veterans marks "the day they almost died at war but survived. I wondered what Cleve's alive day meant for me." Thus begins a grim odyssey, captured unsparingly, beginning with the amputation of Cleve's lower leg following difficult surgeries to preserve it. Grueling stretches of rehabilitation prior to Cleve's official medical retirement taught her that "the military relies on young spouses like me as cheap--sometimes free--labor." Then, overprescribed opioids, a lack of therapeutic options, and bureaucratic torpor lengthened the odds for recovery: "It was easy to pretend that whatever was happening to Cleve was normal, because it seemed like everyone at Walter Reed was struggling with dependence on their medications." Although her story concludes with a glimmer of hope, Cleve's horrific wounding and subsequent mismanaged care clearly mirror the trials of many military families.

A sharp, moving memoir debut with unsettling implications about national service.

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Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Fugett, Karie: ALIVE DAY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A837325447/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b215a50f. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.

Ashton-Stebbings, Maria. "Alive Day: A Memoir." WebOnlyReviewsLJ, vol. 150, no. 3, 21 Mar. 2025, p. 1. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A833062339/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b00dc442. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025. "Fugett, Karie: ALIVE DAY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A837325447/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b215a50f. Accessed 18 Oct. 2025.

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