AUGUST 24, 2014 - Cara Hoffman set her acclaimed new novel in Watertown mainly for the area’s fighting spirit in face of economic adversity.
“I thought it was a perfect setting for the book metaphorically and in reality,” she said.
The book’s main character joins the Army to help her economically distressed family, but comes out of the service with an emotional deficit fueled by post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Clay family in “Be Safe I Love You” is the new American working poor, she said — educated people who must live very frugally.
“The family is the kind of family where it’s paycheck to paycheck, and if one little thing goes wrong, then everything goes wrong,” Ms. Hoffman said in a phone interview from her home in New York City.
Ms. Hoffman said there are many such families, a view reflected last week in a survey released by a Bankrate Inc. It said twice as many Americans are less comfortable with their savings compared to a year ago as those that are more comfortable. The survey also said that 36 percent of Americans have not saved any money for retirement.
snip “I feel that people don’t quite understand what the experience is for women veterans,” Ms. Hoffman said. “People assume that women who serve in the military aren’t seeing combat or aren’t doing the same kind of job as men. I wanted to show that they are and also that they have different experiences when they come home.”
“Be Safe I Love You” has received glowing reviews. London’s Sunday Telegraph named it one of the five best books in modern war fiction. A reviewer for the New York Times, Alissa J. Rubin, said the story is “written with such detail it’s hard to believe the main character is an invention.” read more>>>
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