Deborah A. Gembara

Several people are waiting to greet Captain Vivian Gembara when she returns home after a year-long tour of duty in Iraq--her grateful fiancŠ and two officers dispatched from headquarters to retrieve "the file." Certainly not the homecoming she expected, but such is life when you are in the business of soldiers behaving badly.

As a lawyer for the U.S. Army, Vivian counsels them, investigates them, and when necessary, prosecutes them. When an Iraqi teenagers body is found floating in the Tigris River and U.S. soldiers are believed to have been involved, she knows she has a case on her hands. What she doesn't realize is just how much that case will reveal about the Armys conduct at war.

Drowning in the Desert: A JAG's Search for Justice in Iraq is both a legal thriller and a searing account of the savagery that occurs when commanders place "the fight" above all else.