The Burdens We Carry (Always Forward)

The Burdens We Carry is the fifth and final novella in the Always Forward series.

Malika Baz was ten years old when her entire world was torn apart. While her father and two older brothers ran from the US military, Malika and her younger siblings were taken away from the only home she had ever known. Malika soon learned that her mother had been a US soldier who had been a prisoner of war for the last fifteen years. As a young girl, she didn’t understand what this meant or that her father was to blame for the imprisonment.

Over the years, Malika would learn the truth, and even though she and her siblings would go on to live happy lives with their adopted parents, Malika would carry the traumas of her past into adulthood.

She never could have guessed that ten years after being taken from her village in Iraq, she would finally have the chance to face the burdens she had carried all these years.