Kelly Sokol. Breach. Köehlerbooks, 2022.
If the Navy wanted you have a wife, they would have issued you one.
Anyone in the military has probably heard that applied to whatever branch they were serving in.
Breach is an intense, realistic novel. There are likely Navy wives whose experience is similar to that of Marleigh Holt. Marleigh has pretty much raised herself since both of her parents are alcoholics. Her one family rock is her grandfather who operates a seedy boxing gym in the Tidewater area of Virginia, home to numerous military bases. But her grandfather is getting senile and her alcoholic parents are stealing from him.
Marleigh holds down three jobs to keep things going: she works most nights at the gym for her grandfather, she waitresses, and she is a skilled tattoo artist. At the gym she meets and falls in love with Jace Holt. Their affair is torrid, but they do get married.
Jace’s family background is not unlike Marleigh’s: his mother is an alcoholic widow, so he is raised by an aunt and uncle. His sister tells Marleigh she is the best thing that has happened to him.
Jace has one of the hairiest duties in the military. He is an explosive ordnance disposal technician, or EOD. He will serve multiple tours overseas disarming explosive devices, mostly roadside IEDs (improvised explosive devices) which the Middle East has become notorious for. It is nerve-wracking. Each attempt at disarming could erupt in an explosion. And even when things go OK so that no one is killed, there still can be damage and political consequences.
We get the whole story from Marleigh’s perspective. Because she grew up near Navy bases, she is not unfamiliar with sailors and their ways. She especially sees the hierarchy among Navy wives even before she becomes one.
The first half of Breach tells of her love affair and marriage to Jace. They really do have a lot of affection for each other. The graphic descriptions of their lovemaking may be too explicit for some readers, but their love seems to take. The descriptions of Marleigh giving birth (three babies in four years) are also quite vivid.
The second half of Breach, things go south. If any readers have read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, they know that the main character Jurgis just has one setback after another. It does not seem to end. If you think things could not get any worse, just wait till you read the next chapter. Without giving too much away, Breach becomes like that.
Since we only see things from Marleigh’s perspective, there are a few things we never find out. Why did Jace’s personality change after his last deployment? What happened? If he was talking about getting a big reenlistment bonus, why did he get a general discharge? And why did he not continue his life insurance, for which sailors can get a good discount when they are released?
The grittiness of the some of the hospital scenes and related drama (I am trying to avoid too many spoilers) reminded this reviewer of John Barth’s The End of the Road, and not just because of the location. There seem to be parallels between midwives and tattoo artists in Breach—the author admires both.
Unlike The End of the Road, Breach concludes with a glimmer of hope. And unlike The Jungle, the hope is not based on some unrealistic political utopia.
Breach tells a gritty tale, but one that some military wives can probably identify with. No, I suspect few have accumulated as many difficulties as Marleigh, but we can see how they could happen. They can probably say, “I know someone who had something like that happen to them” or “That reminds of (fill in the blank)” or “So-and-so in my husband’s unit did the same thing” or even “Those EOD techs are in their own little world.”
When I was in the service, I had a motorcycle. My uncle was a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. He received a bronze star and silver star in World War II. He saw intense action in Italy and received his silver star from General Marshall for a classified commando raid. He told me, though, he lost more men on leave at home through careless behavior than he did in battle. He liked the motorcycle. Earlier in his life he had been a motorcycle policeman. He just wanted to make sure I kept my head when I was off duty. According to Breach things are no different in the modern era than they were in the forties.