A View From A Train by Robert Wright

A View From A Train by Robert Wright

After retirement from the military in 2006 and Civil Service in 2008, I spent the next 4 years as an artist, painting murals and other commissions.

My job since 2012 was with the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) as an engineer on a commuter train.

In May 2017, the Veterans Affairs(VA) diagnosed me with an 80 percent disability, most of which was post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), along with burn pit asthma, tinnitus, and sleep apnea. And still open is a further investigation into the effects of agent orange. The PTSD portion was apparent in my expressed anger.

In July 2017, my wife, Carol, was diagnosed with cancer, and I decided to quit work on September 29 to support her. A week before leaving UTA I was given an assignment by a VA therapist to address the PTSD portion of the diagnosis. The assignment was to review the four wars for a single event that gave rise to PTSD. This assignment at the end of September coincided with the last week at the UTA.

While operating the train for the last week, I'm revisiting each of the wars looking for the prime cause of my PTSD. This book will speak to anyone underneath a cloud of PTSD. It's not just for those that served in the military. Rather for anyone connected with anyone living with PTSD. This book looks at the political triggers that set PTSD in motion and the spiritual when trying to recover.

Robert Wright, PhD, is professor of history at Trent University Durham in Oshawa, Ontario. He is the author of the national bestsellers Three Nights in Havana and The Night Canada Stood Still, both of which won the Canadian Authors Association's Lela Common Award for Canadian History, and Our Man in Tehran, which was made into an award-winning documentary film. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.