A former stripper, Burana (Strip City
) married a major in the U.S. Army and records, in this heartfelt though long-winded confessional, her attempts to render their two very different worlds compatible. Burana enjoyed a decidedly checkered past, from “accidental teenage communist” to peep-show girl and stripper in New York and San Francisco (she fondly recalls her Playboy
shoot), before meeting “Major Mike” at a ceremony in a Brooklyn cemetery in 2000. She was attracted by his sense of order and honor, even charmed by his military jargon, while he admired her rebelliousness, though these same qualities would challenge their relationship over time. Living together in a condo near Fort Meade, Fla., where Mike was stationed, segued into a quick marriage (she called herself a “War on Terror” bride), before he was deployed to Iraq for six months in 2003, creating for her a painful personal trial of waiting and self-discipline. Their move to West Point underscored her new role as military wife, and she embarked on a gloomy, unstable period of psychological turmoil requiring therapy and medication for her own brand of post-traumatic stress disorder. Marriage counseling worked for them, bucking the high divorce rate within the armed forces, and Burana concludes her memoir on a positive note, having made peace with the army's fallibility and found her own place in it. (Apr.)
