Anchor and Flares

In this memoir, a woman shares her conflicted feelings about her son volunteering for military service.

When she was a young mother, Kate Braestrup discovered the fierce protectiveness that accompanies parenthood. In the intervening years—through mourning her husband and the joy of remarriage and a blended family—Kate has absorbed the rewards and complications of that spirit. But when her eldest son joins the Marines, Kate is at a crossroads: Can she reconcile her desire to protect her children with her family's legacy of service? Can parents balance the joy of a child's independence with the fear of letting go?

As Kate examines the twinned emotions of faith and fear—inspired by the families she meets as a chaplain and by her son's journey towards purpose and familyhood—she learns that the threats we can't predict will rip us apart and knit us together.

“Braestrup confronts issues of love and independence, fate and violence, faith and service. . . . But the book's at its most powerful when she lingers at her story's quietest moments.” —Boston Globe

“She's working to understand the very heart of parenthood—the weave of attachments that make it almost impossible to do what we know we must: let go.” —New York Times–bestselling author Kelly Corrigan

Reading Anchor and Flares is like having a fiercely compassionate and comically no-nonsense best friend meandering with you through meditations on faith, war, death, and parenting.” —New York Times–bestselling author Catherine Newman