Braxton McCoy

In 2006, Sgt. Braxton McCoy (Ret.) was severely wounded by a suicide bomber in Ramadi, Iraq, and later told he may never walk again. After nearly a decade of physical therapy and rehabilitation Braxton has not only regained the majority of his strength, but he has now climbed mountains and competed in endurance races. This book follows his story from the day he was wounded through his nearly decade long rehabilitation. Along the way he finds himself trying to adapt to the world with a mind and body he no longer understands. Braxton battles not just physical and mental trauma, but a host of other issues such as nihilism, opioid and alcohol addiction, suicide and a Traumatic Brain Injury. In the end, he is able to work through all of these challenges, but like Odysseus, he and those who read his story are changed forever.

“Our fascination with warfare and the warriors who wage it has never ended when the conflict does. It is no coincidence that the oldest extant works of Western literature—Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey—are epic tales of combat and homecoming, and these themes have resonated throughout the millennia since. It is too rarely, however, that the warrior has taken us on this journey himself. In “Overcome: Part One,” Braxton McCoy has given us a glimpse inside the mind and body of a warrior who is wounded and taken unwillingly from the battlefield, and the journey he embarks on as he struggles to mend not only his body, but his mind as well as he discovers what warriors throughout history have always found to be true--returning home, far from being a respite, is simply a war of a different type" -- SSG Chris Beckstrand, US Army