Cindy in Iraq: A Civilian's Year in the War Zone

"Cindy in Iraq" is Cynthia Morgan's hair-raising yet jubilant chronicle of her perilous year in war-torn Iraq as a truck driver — the most dangerous civilian job in the war zone.

In the summer of 2003, a friend in the National Guard stationed in Iraq wrote to Morgan about KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that was hiring drivers. Morgan was from a family with a long military history; her oldest son was in the National Guard at the time. Wanting to do her part for her country and struggling financially after leaving her abusive third husband, Cindy decided she was "tired of surviving her life and not living it."

She left everything and everyone behind and set out for Kuwait and Iraq to be a truck driver for KBR. She felt Iraq would give her the opportunity she needed to make some changes in her life. Her three sons, then ages 18, 16, and 15, along with the rest of her family, supported her decision, but made her promise that she would always tell them the truth about what she was going through as a driver in Iraq. Drawn in part from the emails she posted home and the journals she kept, "Cindy in Iraq" re-creates in vivid detail how Morgan overcame the stigma of being one of the rare female truck drivers and quickly rose through the ranks to become a convoy commander. She led her fellow Reefer Cowboys — "reefer" is short for "refrigerated truck" — in convoys that delivered necessary goods to soldiers stationed in such notorious hot spots as Baghdad Airport, Camp Anaconda — a place as dangerous as its name — and Fallujah. A moving target for insurgents and with virtually no training, and unarmed as well, she faced being ambushed and shot at, all while learning how to navigate Iraq's difficult terrain. As the insurgency heated up, contractors were in more and more peril, increasingly kidnapped and executed. By the time Cindy's year in Iraq was up, she had shrapnel in her arm. She also discovered that there are times when the enemy can be someone you know.

Cindy's journey to Iraq was also a voyage of self-discovery: "I knew that I would find out who I am and what I am made of here.... Honor, integrity, pride, and humanity can all be discovered. I know that I still am a very passionate person when it comes to the things I believe in.... I am still me, but more.... So my story of being over here is not just one of a female truck driver driving in a war zone in Iraq. It is a story of me finding the world, and of me finding me."

Cindy's is an eyewitness account of war that few journalists can offer: The grateful Iraqi children, the hardworking U.S. soldiers, and the personal stories of soldiers and civilians alike thrown together in a war unlike any other the United States has ever fought.

"Morgan, a civilian who drove refrigerated trucks throughout Iraq delivering ice to U.S. troops, narrates a chatty, companionable book that offers an unusual look at life in Iraq. She goes to Iraq in part to empower herself after three failed marriages (her third husband tried to strangle her) and in part because of a deeply felt and frequently expressed patriotism; the book successfully blends these two aspects, and the Cindy that returns from Iraq is a stronger person than the battered woman who arrived in September 2003. The writing is strongest when Morgan relates the details of trucking in a war zone (her account of an ambush is particularly gripping) and life on an army base (one episode involves a bomb-disarming robot chasing her). Unfortunately, Morgan often slips into vague ruminations on patriotism, and the story turns dull despite the drama inherent in Morgan's job. Her voice is honest, and the story can be both gripping and horrible (as when she was raped while in Kuwait), but the book, which depends heavily on e-mail correspondence and a blog Morgan maintained while in Iraq, lacks tightness of vision." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Wanting to do her part for her country and struggling financially after leaving her abusive husband, Morgan set out for Kuwait and Iraq to be a truck driver for KBR. Drawn in part from the emails she posted home and the journals she kept, this autobiography re-creates in vivid detail how Morgan overcame the stigma of being one of the rare female truck drivers and quickly rose through the ranks to become a convoy commander.

Cynthia I. Morgan drove a big rig across the U.S. for twelve years before venturing on a one-year contract in 2003 with KBR in Iraq, where she became a civilian convoy commander in charge of up to thirty trucks delivering supplies to American bases throughout the war-torn country. After seven months back in the U.S., she returned to Kuwait and Iraq to keep driving. She lives, usually, in Tennessee.