Scars & Strife
First Sergeant John Randall “Randy” Andrews, a gutsy Army Ranger, is a hero among his brothers in arms. But the Purple Hearts and Silver Stars he earned came at a great personal cost. Now plagued by PTSD, Randy returns home after thirteen combat tours to an emotionally distant wife and their two sons—one of them a toddler he’s never met.
Struggling to piece his life together, Randy finds himself in handcuffs. And when the court-mandated VA counseling doesn’t help, he embarks on a trip to Mexico, trying to escape his demons. There, during an unexpected encounter in a seedy tourist bar, he finds a possible road to redemption when he forms a connection with Matilda, a mountain lion kept in a cage as a tourist attraction.
So begins his journey back from the brink as he rediscovers something he learned on the battlefield: that sometimes one must cross a line in order to save someone . . . perhaps even himself.
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M. E. (Mark) Johnson is a retired colonel of the United States Army. An Iraq War veteran, he received the Bronze Star for his service in Baghdad and often writes of the trauma suffered by combat veterans. Mark also served as a superior court judge over a veterans treatment court for eight years, putting him on the front lines of the battle to heal the post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, addiction, and military sexual trauma from which so many veterans suffer.
Now retired from the bench, Mark has earned a master’s of fine arts in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. In his spare time, he enjoys helping veterans, serving on the boards of veteran charities, rescuing dogs, and traveling with his family.