It's a powerful generational coming-of-age narrative against the backdrop of war. Lauren Kay Johnson, author of the new memoir "The Fine Art of Camouflage", joined us to share her experiences with military life--from a child's perspective of watching her mother leave and return home to a hero's welcome to that of a young idealist volunteering to deploy to Afghanistan who, war-worn, eventually questions her place in the war, the military, and her family history-and their place within her.

Lauren is just seven when she first experiences a sacrifice of war as her mother, a nurse in the Army Reserves, deploys in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. A decade later, in the wake of 9/11, Lauren signs her own military contract and deploys to a small Afghan province with a non-combat nation-building team. Through her role as the team's information operations officer-the filter between the U.S. military and the Afghan and international publics-and through interviews and letters from her mother's service, Lauren investigates the role of information in war and in interpersonal relationships, often wrestling with the truth in stories we read and hear from the media and official sources, and in those stories we tell ourselves and our families.

• Book Event for "The Fine Art of Camouflage"
• Wednesday, March 29 at 7:00pm
• Powell's City of Books, 1005 West Burnside, Portland

For more information, visit Lauren's website.