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Michele DeMarco is a writer and researcher on moral injury. For more than a decade she has collected stories of people—often invisible, hidden, or unacknowledged—who have experienced this trauma.
In the Black Hours, we hear from soldiers (including one of the few remaining World War II veterans who was in the battalion that liberated the first German concentration camp), police, EMTs, and other first responders, nurses and doctors, journalists at the frontline of disaster, those being trafficked or abused, those wrestling with substance abuse or addiction, humanitarian workers, refugees, individuals on both sides of the border, gang members, chaplains and priests, husbands and wives, and the average “Joe” or “Jane,” among others.
The stories aren’t always easy to read—and that’s the point: moral injury isn’t easy to digest. Good people sometimes are thrown into situations that require them to do “bad,” or else into situations in which they cannot prevent “bad” from happening, despite their best intentions or efforts. That they feel this pain is a mark of their abiding goodness—and the starting point for healing.