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After a friend encourages Mounsey to write a memoir, how she evolves over the course of her narrative is a result worth sharing. The book starts with a synopsis of events proving to Mounsey that challenge is her modus operandi. For example, she leaves a domineering husband despite many risks. She pursues nursing as a career to support her four children on her own and moves to a different state. When the kids are self-sufficient, she takes a nursing position in Iraq.
Describing courageous, determined steps like these characterizes the first half of the story. Like Mounsey’s rotational work schedule (twenty-eight days working and twenty-eight off), chapters toggle between duty and adventure. Work chapters detail her tasks and coworkers, both English-speaking and Iraqi. She describes the work site and surrounding areas and what she learns researching her adopted home. In other chapters, often with friends and family, she runs several races around the globe during her leave, as well as explores the wonders of the world. She visits people she’s met during her many trips. With color photos that illustrate anecdotes in almost every chapter, Mounsey’s story becomes both a personal album celebrating cherished connections and an eye-witness account of Middle East oil fields, the UK countryside, Mt Everest, and more. Sparing no expense for photographic documentation highlights the gratitude she expresses with frequency about her chance at any and all experiences. She takes nothing for granted, not even toilets. Many chapters include impressions (and one photo) of a new type of toilet she gets to use.
Mounsey confesses sleepless nights before traveling internationally, doubts about her safety, and worries about the family she leaves stateside, showing the human person behind her many warrior moves. Her idiosyncrasies of speech, such as “secret squirrels” and feeling like butter, are endearing and disarming. While the travelog sets a steady pace and positive tone, later in the story, a relationship with a coworker and a difficult boss raises questions that deepen the narrative’s scope.
The book’s second part delves more into grave concerns. Over two years in Iraq, Mounsey built a community with locals and expats. Some are featured in photos, and the story is theirs, too. She misses them when she is relocated away from them to Camp Iso (isolated), as she calls it. In this section, the moon, pictured at the beginning of each chapter with a quote, takes on prominence as her abiding solace. The chapters become more philosophical. Mounsey confronts dominant stereotypes about Iraqis. She prepares to confront the person who put her and others in a difficult position. As in her marriage, Mounsey risks push back from her boss for speaking up on behalf of herself and colleagues. As she predicts, her actions have negative consequences.
The book ends with this unfortunate outcome, but not on an unfortunate note. The book convincingly develops Mounsey’s can-do personality. The book’s message, delivered by way of extreme highs and lows illustrated in a conversational style and snapshots, is that no matter what comes, choosing a challenge—the moon—is worth the person who emerges on the other side.