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Send Me

The True Story of a Mother at War

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The extraordinary story of American special operator and trailblazer Shannon Kent, who hunted high value targets on classified missions in the most dangerous locales on earth while trying to balance her life as a wife and mother.

Of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the US military, only a tiny fraction are selected as "operators." Shannon Kent was one of the first women to serve at this level and was widely recognized as one of the best.

Shannon served as a Navy cryptologic technician, responsible for signals intelligence and electronic warfare, but her proficiency with language set her apart. She was assigned to a unit so secretive that its name can't even be printed here, where she worked clandestinely to hunt the most wanted terrorists in the world.

Send Me is Shannon's heroic life story, revealing the truth of both her work and the challenges she faced while trying to raise a family with her husband Joe, himself a Special Forces soldier. He and Shannon met in a war zone, their love forged during a special operations training course, their dedication spanning multiple combat deployments and the birth of their two boys.

It is the legacy of an extraordinary woman who rose to the apex of the military, working with the most elite forces in the world, lifting the veil from the life of a Special Forces family to share their duty, sacrifice, and humanity.

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    • Kirkus

      April 1, 2024
      A portrait of a brilliant warrior and her unlikely path to the front line. Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent was one of the "one percent of the one percent," the truly special operators who are the backbone and brains of the U.S. Special Operations Command. A gifted linguist who mastered French in a month and had a keen ear for the nuances of Arabic dialects, Kent was also skilled at cryptography and at supporting efforts to "Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate," with the "fix" part of the doctrine involving no small amount of lethality. She also had a charm that enabled her to sway unsteady allies into doing what they needed to do, though some tricky negotiations were involved, as with one sheikh who wanted to keep his militia, likely Islamic State supporters, close at hand. After all, write Skovlund and Joe Kent, Shannon's widower and former Army Ranger and Green Beret, "being a militant was probably the most stable profession a young man could have in this part of the world." Like many service members, Shannon enlisted after 9/11; unusually, she advocated both for women in special operations--an idea that "was outrageous to most at the time, especially among the rank and file"--and for fellow warriors who needed help, proving that, as the authors note, with the right training she might have made an exceptional clinical psychologist: "She would know what they were going through because she'd already gone through it." Shannon was killed in action in 2019 in Syria, along with two other Americans and a civilian interpreter, victims of an IS suicide bomber. It is some consolation and no spoiler to note that the planners of that attack were, yes, fixed. Patriotism without jingoism, and a sensitive look at an exceptional life of service.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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