BOOK DESCRIPTION: EMBEDDED

When Catherine Lang’s niece and Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang was killed while embedded with Canadian troops near Kandahar City, Afghanistan, in 2009, her world shifted.

In the aftermath, Lang and her family experienced the rigour of military ceremony. As she pieced together fragments from Michelle’s last days, Lang connected with the loved ones of soldiers who died alongside Michelle. She met with those injured by the roadside bomb, including the lone civilian woman talking to Michelle at the time of the blast, discovering in her and others a steely resilience to carry on and a more intimate understanding of the meaning of sacrifice. Suddenly thrust close to this aspect of Canadian society, Lang began to question previously held black-and-white views about military engagement, and she turned to writing as a way to understand the impact on her and her family, and to ensure that Michelle lived on in memory.

Wrestling with the unfathomable consequence of war, she travels across Canada to learn about Michelle through the eyes of her colleagues and friends. This process brings Lang to Saskatchewan, where she had lived as a child—a homecoming that reveals much to Catherine about Michelle, and about herself. Brought together by a shared love of journalism, a career she left behind, and dedication to press freedom and to the rights of Afghan women and girls, Lang is led back to writing through her search for Michelle, and back to Michelle through the language of love and loss.

Books will be available for sale from the author.

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY: CATHERINE LANG

Catherine Lang published her first book, O-Bon in Chimunesu: A Community Remembered, following work as a community newspaper reporter and freelance writer in the 1980s and ‘90s. A creative non-fiction work about the former Japanese-Canadian community in Chemainus, B.C., O-Bon won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, a BC Book Award, in 1997.

Lang subsequently worked as an editor of provincial legislative debates and in provincial government treaty negotiations. In 2009, her niece Michelle Lang was killed as an embedded reporter in Afghanistan. Setting her mind to return to the writing life, Lang spent the following decade researching and writing her memoir, Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss and Consequence. It was published in 2024.

An active member of the Victoria chapter of Right to Learn Afghanistan, Lang is donating ten percent of her royalties to support the organization’s programs, including virtual education to women and girls in Afghanistan.

A recent review she wrote of Tim Martin’s book Unwinnable Peace in Open Canada can be found here: https://opencanada.org/unwinnable-peace-untold-stories-of-canadas-mission-in-afghanistan-by-tim-martin-tidewater-press-2024/.