Final Salute is book about what happens after a Marine dies.  It is about the notification officers who knock on the door and notify the families .  It is about  the public ceremonies as well as about the families, the fallen marines and the challenges of mourning, coping and remembering.

The thoughts and convictions of the notification officers are laid bare along with their struggles to assist the  families with the funeral arrangements and bureaucratic red tape. 

This is not a book with a political agenda.  It provides a window into the  home front anguish of those traumatized souls who remain the invisible casulties of the war. 

Major Steve Beck, notification officer, is featured in the introduction to the stories of four marines.  Sheeler payed the deceased troops and their families the respect of not treating them as card board characters, but rather as well rounded dimensional human beings all people can relate to. 

Sheeler ends the book with  a follow-up on how the families have managed to go forward in the years following their tragic losses. 

Every one  on either side of the War on Terror debate should take the time to read this book.  It removes the debate from the impersonal statistics  and sanitization of the media to a realization that all the people involved in this cycle of sacrifice and loss are individuals,  imperfect  and  unique.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jim Sheeler has performed an act of national service with this book.