{"id":927,"date":"2018-12-31T14:44:30","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=927"},"modified":"2018-12-31T14:44:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T14:44:30","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=927","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/span>MEMOIR\/MILITARY<\/p>\n

Mary Jennings Hegar<\/span><\/p>\n

Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman\u2019s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Berkley Publishing Group<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-1019-8843-5, (also available as an e-book and on Audible), 304 pgs., $26.00<\/p>\n

March 7, 2017<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle lady, why can\u2019t you just leave the fightin\u2019 to the men who are so good at it? I mean, what could you possibly have to contribute?\u201d<\/p>\n

An adrenaline junkie with attitude,<\/span> Mary Jennings Hegar<\/span> knew she wanted to be a fighter pilot since she watched the exploits of Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon.<\/span> Supported and encouraged by her family, she joined Air Force ROTC at the University of Texas at Austin. Hegar became a helicopter pilot, fighting wildfires in California, eradicating marijuana in national forests, providing hurricane support in Texas, and executing long-range overwater rescues over the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, Hegar deployed to airfields and forward operating bases in Afghanistan three times as a Medevac pilot.<\/p>\n

Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman\u2019s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front<\/span><\/a><\/span> is the memoir of Major Mary Jennings \u201cMJ\u201d Hegar, recipient of the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor. Shoot Like a Girl<\/span> is a straightforward, chronological narrative of Hegar\u2019s ambition to fly for the United States, the triumphs and trials along the way, and her determination to succeed despite arbitrary obstacles thrown into her path solely because of her gender.<\/p>\n

Hegar\u2019s first experience of discrimination was in high school, when a trusted teacher refused to write a letter of recommendation for ROTC. The discrimination continued when her first commander refused to return her salute; when her chain of command took her husband\u2019s job into consideration when making decisions about her professional future; when her squadron members practiced outright sabotage; and when she experienced sexual assault by an Air Force doctor during a physical that would determine whether Hegar would attend pilot school. She would eventually lobby Congress \u2014 and sue the Secretary of Defense in Hegar, et al. v. Panetta.<\/span><\/p>\n

The front cover of Shoot Like a Girl<\/span> carries the recommendation of Senator John McCain, and features an arresting photograph of Hegar in full battle gear, the edges of her body indistinct, merging into the Kandahar Mountains backdrop. Submitted as required to the Department of Defense (DoD) for vetting before publication, Shoot Like a Girl <\/span>retains DoD redactions in the form of thick black rectangles obliterating sensitive details.<\/p>\n

Filled with illustrative anecdotes and humor, Shoot Like a Girl<\/span> sports an eye-catching first line. \u201cI glanced out the window at the dark shadows of sharks just under the surface of the sea,\u201d an experience which took place during refueling midair, as she was piloting a helicopter two dozen feet from a C-130 tanker at 120 miles per hour. Despite a usually engaging voice, Shoot Like a Girl<\/span> is Intermittently dry, and although it loses momentum in the second third it recovers nicely. The action passages are nerve-racking (\u201cAs [machine-gun] rounds impacted the tail and slowly started moving forward as the enemy maneuvered the heavy gun, our eight-ton aircraft rocked like a little rowboat on the ocean\u201d), the recounting of disrespect (even while soaked in jet fuel and covered in her own blood) breathtaking, the discussion of aviation-combat tactics fascinating.<\/p>\n

\u201cOutstanding, [Hegar]. You shoot like a girl,\u201d an instructor remarked after she scored expert. Hegar is taken aback, not sure if this is a compliment or an insult. The instructor explains: \u201cWomen are physiologically predisposed to being excellent marksmen. It\u2019s about their muscle tone, center of gravity, flexibility, heart rate, respiration.\u201d That there are physical advantages to being a woman in combat was a revelation to her. Thus, the title. \u201cIn my experience, changing the minds of people whose opinions aren\u2019t based on actual facts tends to be the hardest,\u201d Hegar writes, \u201cbecause their beliefs are rooted in their prejudices as opposed to reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}