Ebook: One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New WritersTo meet Nate Fick is to walk away encouraged about the future of America. For in this young man, one finds an uncommon mixture of thoughtfulness, intelligence, and drive -- all of which come shining through in his first book, One Bullet Away. In the mid-1990s, Fick was a Dartmouth student with plans for grad school -- big plans that would cost big money. So when he made a calculation and entered the Marine Corps' Officer Candidates School to fund his further education, he was tested within an ounce of his strength in order to stay the course. But several years later, the catastrophic events of 9/11 would send Fick to Afghanistan and later to Iraq, where his hard-core training came in handy, and the throwaway lines he'd heard from instructors, like "There's a fine line between aggressive and foolish," "Don't be in a hurry to get your Marines killed," and "Deal with it," held a new weight -- that of the lives of his fellow soldiers and of the civilians they encountered. Fick is a man with a conscience, too -- one that was tried while he was serving overseas, and one that plagues him still. Reflecting on his experiences as a soldier, he writes, "Philosophical debates were a luxury I could not enjoy. War was what I had. We didn't vote for it, authorize it, or declare it. We just had to fight it." Fight it, he did. (Holiday 2005 Selection)