Unremarried Widow: A Memoir
Artis Henderson, 2014
Simon & Schuster
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 978145164928
Summary
In this powerful memoir, a young woman loses her husband twenty years after her own mother was widowed, and overcomes two generations of tragedy to discover that both hope and love endure.
Artis Henderson was a free-spirited young woman with dreams of traveling the world and one day becoming a writer. Marrying a conservative Texan soldier and becoming an Army wife was never part of her plan, but when she met Miles, Artis threw caution to the wind and moved with him to a series of Army bases in dusty southern towns, far from the exotic future of her dreams. If this was true love, she was ready to embrace it.
But when Miles was training and Artis was left alone, her feelings of isolation and anxiety competed with the warmth and unconditional acceptance she’d found with Miles. She made few friends among the other Army wives. In some ways these were the only women who could truly empathize with her lonely, often fearful existence— yet they kept their distance, perhaps sensing the great potential for heartbreak among their number.
It did not take long for a wife’s worst fears to come true. On November 6, 2006, the Apache helicopter carrying Miles crashed in Iraq, leaving twenty-six-year-old Artis—in official military terms—an “unremarried widow.” A role, she later realized, that her mother had been preparing her for for most of her life.
In this memoir Artis recounts not only the unlikely love story she shared with Miles and her unfathomable recovery in the wake of his death—from the dark hours following the military notification to the first fumbling attempts at new love—but also reveals how Miles’s death mirrored her father’s death in a plane crash, which Artis survived when she was five years old and which left her own mother a young widow.
In impeccable prose, Artis chronicles the years bookended by the loss of these men—each of whom she knew for only a short time but who had a profound impact on her life and on the woman she has become. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1980
• Born—Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Pennsylvania; M.A.,
Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Artis Henderson is an award-winning journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Florida Weekly, and the online literary journal Common Ties. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She lives in New York. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[A] powerful look at mourning as a military wife…one would struggle to find a young author so committed to detail. As [Henderson] writes her way toward her version of a happy, or perhaps happy-as-it-can-be, ending, she does so with her wits about her and all five senses thoroughly engaged. Her sense of place is exquisite…One can spend an afternoon reading a book, only to have the experience fly into the ether, forgotten until you glimpse the cover buried in a stack on your bedside. Or, as with this book, you can finish it in a day and find yourself haunted weeks later…Gold star work from a gold star wife.
Lily Burana - New York Times Book Review
After four months of marriage, Henderson lost her husband, a 23-year-old Army pilot, in the Iraq war, and she recounts in this languid, heart-tugging narrative their love story.... In her fluid prose Henderson portrays a moving journey to selfhood that strikes the reader as authentic and emotionally honest. Agents: Ann Stein and Aitken Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Jan.)
Publishers Weekly
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Library Journal
A deeply moving memoir of love and grief that takes readers into the life of a military wife turned widow in a way that both embraces and transcends expectations.... Her willingness to reveal the complexities of her marriage as well as the raw emotion of her loss makes for a compelling page-turner. Book clubs will find much to discuss here.... A wholly American story that will find broad appeal with every reader who has ever wondered if she made the right choice.
Booklist
Journalist Henderson chronicles her passionate but unlikely romance and marriage to Miles, a fighter pilot... In 2006, Miles' helicopter crashed in bad weather.... Henderson writes movingly of his poignant, last letter to her.... She recounts how he urged her to pursue her dreams and relates her struggle to do so, despite her grief.... A beautiful debut from an exciting new voice.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Early in the book, we learn that Artis’s father was a pilot, just like Miles, and that he too was killed in a crash. The first time Artis’s mother meets Miles, she tells Artis he is just like her father. How do you see Artis’s family history affecting the decisions she makes? How do you think that knowledge and those memories influenced how she felt about getting involved with a pilot?
2. “What if you love someone with all your heart but you’re afraid that being with him means giving up the life you imagined for yourself?” (p. 88) Artis asks when she’s trying to figure out how to make a life with Miles. Later, when she pitches a relationship column to Florida Weekly, she admits she’s interested in “how to negotiate the terrain between what we want from life and what we want from a partner” (p. 220). How do you see this central question play out throughout the book? How do the other people in the story, especially those connected to the army, struggle with or resolve this tension?
3. Miles grew up in Texas, which is portrayed in the book as dry, dusty, and hot. Instead of staying in Texas while Miles deploys, Artis goes to Florida, her home, which feels lush and verdant. How does the author use the distinctive settings to cast light on how place affects the story? What other settings in the book does she describe, and how does that affect what happens there?
4. While Miles is stationed in Iraq, he tells Artis a story about going running one day. On the way back, he sees another solider ahead of him and decides to race him to camp. It is only once they’re back to camp safely that he realizes a sandstorm had blown up behind him; he has just outrun a sandstorm. Do you see this image as a metaphor for anything else in the book?
5. Artis never imagined marrying into the military, and she tries to separate herself from military life, never really fitting in with the other army wives or with Miles’s co-workers at the Officer’s Club. After Miles deploys, she moves to Florida and even talks about buying a house there to be their permanent home, removed from whatever base Miles will be sent to next. How else do you see Artis’s longing for distance play out in the story? What do you make of the fact that Artis eventually finds community and healing at the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar?
6. Artis says that often women just know when something bad has happened to their husband (p. 127). Have you ever experienced a similar feeling of certainty about something happening far away? What do you think might be behind it?
7. Teresa Priestner is not satisfied with the information she is given about the helicopter crash that killed her husband and Miles, and she spends the rest of the book trying to prove that John deserves a Purple Heart. Artis, on the other hand, believes that their husbands are gone, and it doesn’t matter exactly how it happened (p. 169). What do these different attitudes reveal about how each woman deals with her grief? How do you think the differences in their lives might have influenced how they processed their husbands’ deaths?
8. Think about the different types of dreams that occur in the book—Miles’s startlingly prescient dream about the crash that opens the book (p. 10); the dream about the house Artis and Miles hoped to buy in Texas (p. 94); the dream in which Miles tells her that death itself is like a dream (p. 189). Do you think Artis believes it? How are these dreams different from one another, and how do they tie elements of the story together?
9. After Miles’s death, Artis admits that she feels angry at many people, but especially at her mother, “whose fate, despite my best efforts, I now shared.” (p. 132) Her relationship with Miles’s mother starts out rocky, but after his death, they are drawn together by their shared grief. What do these different responses reveal something about each of these women? How do you see Artis struggling to navigate the complicated territory of familial relationships?
10. In the beginning of the story, Artis consults a psychic, who gives her specific predictions Artis simply can’t imagine coming true (which, of course, do). Later in the story, she sees the psychic again, and is given more unbelievable predictions, at least one of which—seeing her name in print—has obviously come true. Do you believe in psychics? What do you make of the fact that her predictions were correct? Is there anything the psychic got wrong? Do you believe these predictions can be in any way self-fulfilling? Why or why not? What does the act of consulting a psychic reveal about Artis’s deep desires?
11. “Losing a spouse is in no way like losing a child, but all loss is in some way like losing ourselves.” Discuss this line. What losses have you experienced in your life? Do you agree that loss is like losing yourself? How do you find your way back?
12. There are several ways in which Artis reaches out for—or is reached out to by—the other side: She has dreams where Miles talks to her after he’s gone; she visits a psychic who gives her a message from Miles; she experiences strange phenomena, such as knocking in her house and the microwave turning on in the night, which she thinks might indicate a ghost. “I shook my head, disbelieving,” she writes. “But also believing a little.” (p. 186) What do you make of this? How do you see the barrier between this life and the next? Have you ever experienced similar comfort from beyond? How do you think the author’s belief allows her to experience or recognize it?
13. This story is written about events that happened in the not-too-distant past, and many of the events and trends that she mentions—the Florida real estate bubble that would never burst; the stock market crash of 2007—are written from the perspective of someone who knows how things turns out. How do you think knowing what happens to Miles affects how the author portrays the early stages of their relationship? Are there other elements of the story where you see this?
14. “If you took all the sorrows of the all the people in the world and hung them from a tree like fruit and then you let people choose which one they wanted, we would still pick our own” (p. 241). Do you believe this is true? Why or why not?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)