The difference is in the details - Life on Base: Quantico Cave by Tom & Nancy Wise

"This gave me an inside view of the upside of growing up in that environment, as well as the downside. The characters were fun to get to know. I really enjoyed how the author captured the nature and activities of boys of that age group. Growing up a tomboy myself, it brought back those memories of my own. This is a read all adolescents would enjoy." - Goodreads, Julie

Description:

Published: December 23rd, 2015

For Stephen, his life on base is much the same as most other children’s. The difference is in the details. Look both ways before crossing a tank path and be sure to check if the spent bullet casings you find in the long-abandoned trenches are actually empty. Sports stop at the sound of the evening trumpet call as he and his friends stand at attention while the flag is retired. Quantico Cave is a story of friendship and competition, and when Stephen meets up with a friend he once knew at a previous home station, the contest hits a whole new level that places everyone at risk.

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inspiration behind the book 

Telling stories was an art long before the written word. Families would sit together and entertain one another around a warm fire or perhaps the dinner table. Storytime created a sense of belonging and history to the family unit. Nancy and I continued this practice when our children were young, telling them stories of our lives while growing up in the home of military veterans. In the summer evenings, we would gather around a small campfire in the back yard and tell each other stories. Most of the campfire stories were ghost stories with a sneaky little twist ending to keep from scaring them too much. 

Our children always encouraged us to write these stories down so they could remember them although they were able to recite them at will. We decided to put these stories into a book series for middle-grade and YA readers as a way of introducing them to the life of Military BRATs. BRATs are the children of warriors. They live in what many now call America’s Third Culture children because their lives, while not a chosen path, are dedicated to the service of our country every bit as much as those that serve in the military. 

There are millions of people raised in the culture of the military. While they face many of the same challenges as everyone else, the differences are in the details. BRATs live in a culture shielded from the mainstream, a small biosphere of patriotism, military hierarchy, and history. We are BRATs ourselves, and so we wanted to tell the story of BRATs in a way that the mainstream culture can understand and relate. 

The kids always encouraged us to write the stories down, and so we decided to create a series of stories based on life on a military base.

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About the author:

Tom and Nancy Wise are award-winning authors. Their first novel, The Borealis Genome, is the grand- prize winner of the Chanticleer Book Reviews Dante Rossetti 2013 Award for YA Novels and 2014 Cygnus Award Lab Lit Category. Thomas grew up in a military family moving from base to base as the child of a Marine, living the life of an officer’s brat in times of war while Nancy was raised the youngest child of a WWII veteran. When not working together on their novels, Tom teaches at University and authors articles on project management topics and nonfiction books published by Gower Publishing in the UK.

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