Soft Spots continues to get rave reviews

ASU alum, Iraq War vet finds healing in his book, 'Soft Spots'
Clint Van Winkle, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, was struggling to cope with life after combat upon his return to the States in 2003. Awful memories and images of devastation, callous violence and mind-scenes that included burned bodies and dead children were impossible to erase, and help was hard to find. Although he didn’t know it at the time, he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A 2005 graduate of Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (B.A., English), Van Winkle found a small but important piece of the elusive healing process through his authorship of “Soft Spots: A Marine’s Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” (St. Martin’s Press, 2009) a book that evolved from essays he had written. The critically acclaimed book is a detailed account of his service in the early stages of the Iraq War and, more importantly, war’s aftermath and his frustrating experiences upon his return home.

“This memoir of combat in Iraq, and the post-traumatic stress disorder that followed, contains more literary touches than most, and it’s an admirable effort…it presents a vivid picture of what many vets endure,” reads one review in Publishers Weekly. Another review, by The Washington Post’s Juliet Wittman, notes, “Nothing gets held back in “Soft Spots”…despite the author’s lacerating honesty, the narrative is dreamlike and surreal.”

Van Winkle was a Marine sergeant in Iraq, commanding an amphibious assault vehicle section while attached to Lima Company 3rd BN 1st He crossed into Iraq on the first day of the war and moved about the country constantly, encountering all the horrors of war as only a front-line combatant can. Among those horrors were “soft spots,” the term used to refer to a fallen Marine, killed in battle, and accidentally stepped on in the midst of rubble. Marines.
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