Book club members and Social Wave folks! Authors Brian Castner and Sue Diaz will be interviewed by Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy onstage at the Campbell Heritage Theatre on January 30 at 7:30pm. The event is free and is a kick-off to Silcon Valley Reads 2013. Silicon Valley Reads is designed to promote reading and literacy, broaden the exposure to and appreciation of good literature, and build community.

The Silicon Valley Reads 2013 featured books are The Long Walk: A Story of War & the Life That Follows by Brian Castner and Minefields of the Heart: A Mother's Stories of a Son at War by Sue Diaz.

Brian Castner served 3 tours of duty in the Middle East, 2 of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. Days and nights he and his team would venture forth to engage in the nerve-racking yet strangely exhilarating work of either disarming the deadly improvised explosive devices, or picking up the pieces they left behind. When Castner returned home to his wife and family, he began a struggle with an unshakable feeling of fear and confusion and survivor's guilt that he terms The Crazy. His thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book immerses the reader in two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror and excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within.

With a journalist's eye and a mother's warmth, Sue Diaz recounts the emotional rollercoaster her family and other soldiers' families experience during and after deployment. She explores this terrain not only through stories of her son's and family's experiences connected to the Iraq War, but also by insights she's gained from other veterans' accounts--from what she calls "the box" that soldiers returning from any war carry within. This added layer gives her narrative broader meaning, bringing home the impact of war in general on those who fight and on those who love them.