There is no doubt that difficult circumstances can shape a person, but the final result is often up to us. With the right support, we might become coal compressed into diamonds, but pressure could also crush that same coal into useless dust. Eliot Lange and Madeline Crowne have each lived through their share of soul-defining experiences, despite having barely entered adulthood. Maddy and Eliot both served honorably overseas until snap decisions turned them into military deserters and fugitives from a justice system they once trusted. Now they struggle to embrace love and trust in each other as their pasts keep resurfacing. Eliot is willing to risk everything to reach his tender-hearted best friend, a fellow veteran shattered by PTSD. Maddy’s guilt and love for her younger brother drag her into the orbit of Mira, an arms dealer who plucks Maddy half-dead from an Afghan roadside and then refuses to let her go. The young couple hides from Mira and the law, but the weight of their carefully constructed lies, even if only by omission, will prove whether their relationship can shine like a diamond or crumble into dust.
A heady blend of gentleness and anguish, By Her Own Hand takes a decidedly feminine perspective on military fiction. The tension is high and the stakes are higher, but Mira and Maddy dominate the story with their complexities and struggles. Maddy is a woman skilled in combat, but her gender is more empowering than limiting, despite military regulations in place at the time. As a strongly crafted antagonist, Mira becomes far more than a villain. When her backstory is revealed, she is drawn with level-headed sympathy, so that her cruelty and her longing become two sides of the same coin. There is an undeniable richness to the prose, particularly in the softest scenes. A shared cigarette, a single plastic wine glass, one hand tracing another until the two seem made to fit. These are the ordinary moments that elevate this novel above typical military fiction. By using shifting viewpoints, sometimes multiple times in a single chapter, Jack Deveny allows readers to experience events at the exact moment each character feels them. These rapid transitions create momentum while intimately developing characters in each scene. Astute readers may notice occasional point-of-view slippage, including unmarked shifts between first and third person, along with a few syntactic choices that momentarily blur the intended meaning. Nevertheless, the emotional connection with audiences is never at risk. Timely in its concern for veterans, PTSD, and the cost of war, and generous toward even its most broken characters, By Her Own Hand is an earnest novel that satisfies deep to the core.
