Ryan McDermott grew up with an absentee biological father and a mother struggling with her mental health. Military service offered both stability and purpose, but it carried its own risks: ongoing trauma, alienation from civilian life, and more. Here, McDermott reflects on the winding path through warfare and back to civilian life, to a place of comfort—notably, with a full-throated recommendation for mental health counseling.
With a thoughtful and experienced narrator, DOWNRIVER: Memoir of a Warrior Poet is an excellent and timely critique of the American myth. McDermott has personally lived the most American experiences imaginable: he fought for his country abroad, then returned home and entered the financial sector with the intention to raise a family. DOWNRIVER does a great job of evoking a mythic Americana, especially in its earlier sections: family friends are described as “an all-American family—Catholics that went to church every week, and first to leave after taking Communion to make it home in time for the NFL games at noon.” But McDermott’s own experience also shows the flipside of this American idyll: an absentee father, alcoholic family members, a single mother clawing her way through poverty. Sometimes the author’s distinct experiences collide in striking ways, as when he compares colleagues in the financial sector to a corrupt, opportunistic Iraqi deal-maker. Drawing on this broad personal history, McDermott presents an emotionally charged but factually unimpeachable critique of America that’s able to satisfyingly thread some tight needles (especially respect for military service but dissatisfaction with the prosecution of America’s “War on Terror”).
DOWNRIVER is also commendable for its endorsement of counseling for veterans. Indeed, McDermott is unafraid to own his trauma and PTSD, and his counseling sessions form some of the text’s narrative structure. Crucially, DOWNRIVER shows the value of therapy in both civilian and military life: McDermott’s counseling not only helps him process trauma from his military service, but it also allows him to understand the long-term effects of his childhood experiences and the cycles he’s unwittingly perpetuating as a parent. There is still long, constant work to be done in de-stigmatizing mental health care, and DOWNRIVER is a necessary contribution to that work.
The book has some flaws. As a memoir covering several decades, the distribution of focus can be uneven. Lengthy descriptions of Army Ranger training and the 2003 assault on Baghdad will surely be of interest to some readers, including a military history enthusiast (like this reviewer), but they assume an outsized place in the middle of the larger emotional narrative. Also, the occasional use of “warrior” language (including in the subtitle, “Memoir of a Warrior Poet”) is highly suspect. The “warrior” ethos is alien (and threatening) to the American traditions of citizen-soldiery, and it’s surprising that this idea isn’t more prominently interrogated during McDermott’s narrative of increasing maturity. Thankfully, that larger narrative is much more concerned with soldiers as human beings than in selling the “warrior” myth.
Overall, DOWNRIVER remains thoughtful, clear, and hopeful; and McDermott’s voice is a welcome addition to those of other warfighters reflecting on the realities of security and service in the 21st century.
A deeply personal memoir of struggle, Ryan McDermott’s DOWNRIVER: Memoir of a Warrior Poet is a valuable addition to the corpus of veterans’ voices in the world reshaped by 9/11.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader