Book Review: Every Day Is A Gift

Every Day Is a Gift

A Memoir

by Tammy Duckworth

Twelve Books

Twelve

Biographies & Memoirs

Pub Date 30 Mar 2021

I am reviewing a copy of Everyday Is A Gift through Twelve Books and Netgalley:

As the biracial daughter of an American father and a Thai-Chinese mother, Duckworth faced discrimination, poverty, and the horrors of war, all before the age of sixteen. As a girl, she dodged bullets as her family fled war-torn Phnom Penh. She sold roses by the side of the road to save her family from hunger and homelessness in Hawaii as a teenager.

Duckworth joined the Army, becoming one of a handful of female helicopter pilots at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She served eight months in Iraq before an insurgent RPG shot down her helicopter, an attack that took her legs — and nearly took her life. She spent thirteen months recovering at Walter Reed, learning to walk again on prosthetic legs and planning her return to the cockpit. But Duckworth found a new mission after meeting her state’s senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin. After winning two terms as a U.S. Representative, she won election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. And she and her husband Bryan fulfilled another dream when she gave…