Undaunted: The Real Story of America’s Servicewomen in Today’s Military

In her latest, Biank (Army Wives: The Unwritten Code of Military Marriage) sheds light on women who serve in the armed forces. She closely follows the careers of four servicewomen between 2006 and 2011: Brig. Gen. Angela Salinas, the first Hispanic female general in the Marines; 2nd Lt. Bergan Flannigan, a platoon leader married to a man in the same military police company; Sgt. Amy Stokley, a drill instructor for the Marine Corps; and Maj. Candice O’Brien, an officer whose deployment to Afghanistan strains her marriage to a military husband with PTSD. Biank is a skilled biographer, providing contextual snapshots of America’s military with each passing year. Her immersion in each woman’s state of mind makes these stories read almost like a novel, and the clarity of detail, from cadet slang to the social politics on base, reveals the thoroughness of her research. Biank doesn’t offer any groundbreaking conclusions—women are ever more prevalent in the military, but still face challenges in a hypermasculine environment—but these engaging glimpses into the life of military women are more than worth reading for their own sake. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, Sagalyn Literary Agency. (Feb.)