Winner of the 2021 IndieReader Discovery Award for Memoir
Finalist in the 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards for New Nonfiction
Finalist in the 2021 Book Excellence Awards for Memoir
Finalist in the 2021 Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Best Cover Design and Autobiography/Biography
Finalist in the 2021 Independent Author Network Book Awards for Autobiography/Biography
Finalist in the 2021 N.N. Light Book Awards for Memoir
Honorable Mention Award in the 2021 Readers' Favorite Book Awards for Nonfiction/Military

As an only child isolated within a troubled family, F. Scott Service found solace in fantasy and imagination, until a fateful day led to the discovery of his father's Korean W ... [read more]

Winner of the 2021 IndieReader Discovery Award for Memoir
Finalist in the 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards for New Nonfiction
Finalist in the 2021 Book Excellence Awards for Memoir
Finalist in the 2021 Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Best Cover Design and Autobiography/Biography
Finalist in the 2021 Independent Author Network Book Awards for Autobiography/Biography
Finalist in the 2021 N.N. Light Book Awards for Memoir
Honorable Mention Award in the 2021 Readers' Favorite Book Awards for Nonfiction/Military

As an only child isolated within a troubled family, F. Scott Service found solace in fantasy and imagination, until a fateful day led to the discovery of his father's Korean War field jacket hidden in a closet. What began as innocent emulation and approval, eventually spiraled into the calamitous loss of everything he had built as an adult. Faced with a grievous divorce, post-traumatic stress, homelessness, substance abuse, and the failure of everything he had willed himself to believe was truth, one night communing with a loaded pistol became the mechanism for self-clarity. From that darkest time, only elemental deconstruction and reconstruction of identity would allow him to forge a reclamation with his true, original self.

Visceral, with breathtaking candor, Playing Soldier powerfully captures the unlearning of expectation, the celebration of individuality, and the nourishing of self-acceptance once buried by cultural stamps of approval and societal convention. Braided with humor, courage, fear, despair, and hope, his unflinching, evocative story of passage into adulthood, the Iraq War, and beyond, speaks to anyone who has confronted adversity from without and grappled for their dreams from within.

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Winner in the 2022 Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Adult Nonfiction
Winner of the Pacific Book Review Star for a Memoir of Excellent Merit

For F. Scott Service, a five-minute phone call one peaceful morning was all it took. Faced with the terrible dichotomy of his moral opposition to war and an innate sense of duty, little did he realize that when he was called for deployment in Iraq that his would be the journey of a lifetime.

A tour of duty destined to change him forever.

Witnessing the violence of a country ravaged by chaos and facing the disintegration of his life back home, his sojourn in Iraq forced him to fight a new battle, a battle within himself. What had once been a noble ... [read more]

Winner in the 2022 Wishing Shelf Book Awards for Adult Nonfiction
Winner of the Pacific Book Review Star for a Memoir of Excellent Merit

For F. Scott Service, a five-minute phone call one peaceful morning was all it took. Faced with the terrible dichotomy of his moral opposition to war and an innate sense of duty, little did he realize that when he was called for deployment in Iraq that his would be the journey of a lifetime.

A tour of duty destined to change him forever.

Witnessing the violence of a country ravaged by chaos and facing the disintegration of his life back home, his sojourn in Iraq forced him to fight a new battle, a battle within himself. What had once been a noble intention became a desperate struggle to salvage what was left of his humanity, an excursion into the darkest recesses of the human mind that ultimately led him to question everything he had come to believe.

Pushed to the edge, only then would he discover what lay within.

Author F. Scott Service recounts his wartime experience within an artfully lyrical epistolary composition. Transcribed from his handwritten journals, Lines in the Sand is a powerful exercise in self-exploration amid heart-wrenching loss and anguish.

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