Book By Local Author Helps Veterans With PTSD

Royalties from East of Coker will go to Shoulder to Shoulder project

A former soldier from Hanwell who completed tours in Iraq and Afghanistan has published his second book - with the royalties going to a charity that helps veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Andy Owen left the army in 2008 and says whilst he didn't suffer PTSD he knows many who have done.

All money raised from his book East of Coker will be donated to the Shoulder to Shoulder Project, a volunteer mentoring programme supporting ex-service men and women who are recovering from mental health issues or having difficulty adjusting to civilian life. The project also supports veterans’ families.

Andy says it's a charity project that really helps those who oftern suffer in silence:

'' The first step on this journey can be making the bravest decision some will ever have to make; the decision to start talking. As one of the characters in the book resolves: to ‘try to use those late night whisky soaked words I don’t usually use in the sober daylight hours, and be better than the man I once hoped to be’. Shoulder to Shoulder ensures that when someone makes that brave choice there is someone there to listen, someone there to interact with, someone who can help them to start becoming the person they once were again.''

In East of Coker the lives of Arthur, a wounded veteran of an old war, the love he left behind, an injured veteran of a new war and an Iraqi family in Basra, become intertwined as they all try in different ways to cope with the uncertainty the conflicts they have been exposed to has created.

As their stories eventually collide in a hospital in London, while riots outside get closer each night, Arthur tries to free himself from the anchors of the past and ensure his new friend does not suffer like he has. As Arthur learns how to accept his fate he realises there is one more fight he must fight. He must reach the woman who has been waiting for him to return, for all these years, before time runs out. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a family try to cope with the consequences of a modern war fought on ancient soil by unwelcome intruders, threatening their way of life and traditions.  

East of Coker moves through a London and an Iraq that shadows TS Eliot’s Waste Land, asking what duty do those left behind have to those that would otherwise be forgotten and, how through acceptance of what we have done, who we are, and where we are all inevitably heading to, what happiness can be found.

The book is available at Pitshanger Bookshop, as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other on-line stores.

28th June 2016