title: The Warrior: A Mother's Story of a Son at War
author:  Frances Richey 
description: Richey's son went from West Point to the Green Berets and thence to the war in Iraq. Her poems about him have appeared both in literary quarterlies and in O: The Oprah Magazine; this consistently moving, straightforward collection of those poems seems likely to gain much attention. Richey (The Burning Point) remembers her earlier years as a single mother, living through a traumatic miscarriage, juggling work and home life, and later grappling with her son's military vocation: "My son has brothers now," she writes, "the family she wanted." Richey's strongest lines, however, find a sharp blend between personal emotions and public events: she writes a poem to her son's helmet, to his gun, to his "desert camo boots," warning herself, "I can't protect him." Richey, who comes from West Virginia but lives in New York, sees signs of the current conflict everywhere-at the planetarium, for example, or in a taxicab. More than just a book about one war, Richey's collection becomes instead a book about what military service (especially high-risk combat service, such as her son's) does to the psyches and daily lives of those who serve and those who love them. In a museum exhibit about the Civil War, Richey grows "sick to my stomach,/ face-to-face with the gallantry/ of men young/ as my son"; hearing that son, home on leave, boast about his regiment's destructive powers, she muses with self-conscious helplessness, "If I could take that hat off his head,/ he wouldn't say those things." <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  PREGNANT BY THE WARRIOR
  
  DENISE LYNN
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter One
  
  Montreau Keep—Spring 1142
  
  Silent as North Sea raiders of old, the three longships slipped on to the
  sandy beach of Montreau Bay.
  
  Lord Jared of Warehaven leapt from the centre boat, his booted feet splashing
  in the shallow water. Sword raised, he pressed forwards, leading his men into
  the cover of the tall grasses.
  
  He glanced back towards the beach that had once been so familiar, but a thick
  cloud covered the moon, and hid his vessels from sight. Only in his mind's eye
  could he see the great dragon heads guarding the prows, each fierce beast
  nearly identical except for the colour of their jewel-toned eyes.
  
  Jared turned to the task at hand. Anticipation rippled through his muscles.
  Smoothing his lips into a grim line, he headed for the cliff tops.
  
  Situated between King Stephen's supporter, the Earl of York, to the south and
  the Empress Matilda's maternal uncle, King David of Scotland, to the north,
  Montre