"Snapshots of truth . . . Blatty drew the portraits of veterans with love and honesty . . . fearless, furious, broken, hopeless, hopeful, undeterred as forces of nature. It's so easy to start romanticizing them, especially the fallen ones, yet Blatty respects them too much to turn these courageous spirits into cardboard heroes. They are humans instead, with all their follies, anger, broken hearts, and broken lives. The power of a great book is that it stays with you long after you finish reading. It's been ten years since Russians occupied my hometown. It's two years since my whole country turned into a war zone . . . in the fog of the war, these snapshots of truth are as rare as beams of light." -Tetyana Strelchenko, director of America House, Kyiv, Ukraine
Like many post-9/11 combat veterans, JT Blatty struggled to regain her sense of purpose in the first years returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2018, a chance encounter brought her to Ukraine, drawn in by the familiarity of war and those who serve in wars. Over five years, JT captured the oral history and portraits of a tribe of revolutionaries, the Donbas volunteer soldiers. As she embedded with them on the front line in bunkers and forests, and in Kyiv flats, JT's story began to blend with theirs in a universal bond of combat veterans, compelling her to stay as a new war began.
