Photo Credit: Lindsay Potter Photography
Sitting down to share a virtual coffee date with Tori Eversmann, I must admit I feel a little intimidated. Eversmann — a seasoned Army wife, mother, and now the author of hit novel “The Immortals” — is, surely, way out of my league.
But as I accept the Skype call, she smiles broadly and introduces herself, and my nerves immediately dissipate. Here is a woman with a sense of grace and warmth that emanates across several thousand miles and through a computer screen. I feel as though I’m sitting down for a coffee date with an old friend.
Tori is chatting to me from her home in Florida, where she lives with her husband Matt, daughter Molly, and small hoard of pets. Tori’s husband, First Sgt. Matt Eversmann, is a decorated war hero and military leader who survived capture in Somalia. His story is immortalized in the film Black Hawk Dawn, which recounts the 18 harrowing hours when US soldiers in Somalia were trapped in a hostile district of Mogadishu. Actor Josh Hartnett portrays his experience in the film.
We’re actually here to talk about her book. “The Immortals” is her first novel, melding fictional drama with her own experiences as an Army wife. Having recently read the book over one weekend, I found the novel extraordinarily rich, betraying the fact that this is Eversmann’s first offering as an author.
“The Immortals” is the story of Army wife Calli, who finds herself uprooted from her secure, stable life in Maryland and deposited into the military world after her husband is sent to Fort Drumm, NY. Her husband is soon deployed to Iraq, leaving her to fend for herself in the role of Army wife in a foreign social landscape. “The Immortals” is far from a romanticized view of military life we often see in the media, all homecomings and kitschy social clubs; instead, the novel delves into the loneliness and fear of wartime, perfectly illustrating the paradigm between the military and civilian communities. And, of course, there are a lot of laughs to be had in between.