Imagine that your only son was away in a war zone, exposed day and night to mortar attacks, IEDs, and snipers. Jacqueline Montez, the narrator in Imagining Iraq is the mother of a Marine stationed in Iraq. Racked with fear, she spends her days imagining her son’s life in Ramadi, at the heart of the Sunni triangle, the most dangerous area of Iraq. To ease her loneliness and anxiety, Jacqueline rents rooms to veterans, many of whom tell her stories.

The stories in this collection all based on true stories veterans have told the author. Some are heart-wrenching accounts of senseless loss. Some involve the moral choices soldiers must make-for example, whether to kill a terrorist when children are present. Some focus on the mental health of veterans struggling to transition back into civilian life. Others depict women soldiers determined to maintain their dignity in a mostly male world. Not all these stories are gloomy, however. One depicts an unlikely friendship between a Marine and a fiercely anti-American Iraqi tailor and another the collusion between a commanding officer and his men to save the life of a dog.

Three of these stories have won the Maryland Writers Association National Fiction Competition. Jason’s Cap, about a suicidal Army veteran, won first prize in 2015. Ox, about a wayward pup who finds his way into the hearts of a platoon of Marines, won second prize in 2016. Imagining Iraq, about Marines billeted in the home of an Iraqi family, won third prize in 2010. Imagining Iraq was selected for a public reading at the Navy War Memorial on Veterans Day, 2010. Two stories, Prejudice and Ahmed the Tailor , have appeared in Living Springs Baby Boomer Plus Collections.