Every once in awhile, a book comes along that you want to share with the whole world for one reason or another. Until Tuesday is that kind of book.
UNTIL TUESDAY – by Former Captain Luis Carlos Montalván with Bret Witter
A highly decorated seventeen-year veteran returned from his second tour of Iraq with serious physical wounds that ended the career he had trained so hard for and had poured so much of himself into, heart, soul and body. But even more crippling was the post traumatic stress disorder that even former Captain Luis Carlos Montalván and those he loved and trusted most didn’t fully understand or accept. Simply coping with a short trip to the corner deli to purchase a sandwich was a journey filled with landmines that threatened to bury him in a morass of migraine pain and overwhelming paranoia. Navigating the tortuous labyrinth to obtain treatment through the VA was a struggle on every level. The trip to get to the VA or to school on public transportation was often more than this wounded soldier could manage. Life and all hope for the future seemed pretty bleak for Captain Montalván. Until Tuesday.
Until Tuesday, a dog, bred for service work, but broken himself by circumstance, came into Luis Montalván’s life. Until Tuesday taught this broken warrior how to trust, how to cope and to have faith in himself and the future. Until Montalván found the healing power of a relationship with a very special dog.
In the last few decades, our military and medical fields have begun to accept the insidious and debilitating realities of PTSD and seek remedies, but it is fairly recently that the amazing healing power of a properly trained service dog has come on the scene. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done in educating, not just the medical field and the military, but the general public. Beyond being a fantastic read and a heartwarming story, UNTIL TUESDAY should be required reading for every American until we, as a society, understand the cost our young men and women will pay when we send them into harm’s way, and until acceptance of these warriors and the dogs that are saving their lives is universal.
UNTIL TUESDAY is a courageously honest account of one man’s struggle with a disability most of us will never have to face and few understand. It is also the heartwarming story how the love between a broken warrior and a disillusioned canine healed them both. Read this book and the next time you see what appears to be a healthy, robust young man or woman escorted by a canine wearing a service vest, you will have a far better appreciation for the struggles that person is living with every day of their life.
God bless the men and women who have given so much and suffer unspeakably and BRAVO for the growing numbers of special people who understand the difference a canine can make. People like Montalván’s Lu Picard, founder and director of Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities (ECAD), K9s for Warriors and others.
Until Tuesday was part of the inspiration for book two in my Camerons of Tide's Way series, LOVING MEG. Meg, like Capt. Montalván, has returned from a year in a war zone. She is physically whole, but her soul has suffered. She's coping with survivor's guilt and trying to find her way to fit back into her civilian life and feeling like no one, not even her loving husband, can fully understand. Then she meets Kip. Another survivor grieving for a lost partner, Kip worms his way into Meg's heart and teaches her to trust him. Available at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iBooks and Google Play. All royalties for this book are donated to the K9s For Warriors program.
