
Alive Day
A Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Karie Fugett
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By:
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Karie Fugett
About this listen
A searing, unflinchingly intimate memoir about one young couple caught up in the machinery of America’s military system, learning to live and love through war and all that comes after
“Astonishing . . . both a love story and a gripping account of the cost of war.”—Stephanie Land, bestselling author of Maid and Class
Karie Fugett is living out of her car in a Kmart parking lot when her boyfriend, Cleve, suggests, “Maybe we could get married or somethin’.” Karie says yes out of love but also out of convenience. As a twenty-year-old high school dropout who ran away from her family and recently lost her job, Karie has nowhere else to turn. Just months after they elope, Cleve’s Marine unit is deployed to Iraq. It isn’t long before Karie gets the call: Cleve’s Humvee has been hit by an IED, and he’s suffered severe injuries.
Karie rushes to Walter Reed, where she’s told it’s a miracle that her husband has survived. “Happy Alive Day, man,” a fellow vet says to Cleve, explaining that this will always be the day when he was given a second chance at life. Newlyweds barely out of their teens, Karie and Cleve are thrust into utterly foreign roles. Karie tries to adapt to her job as a caregiver, navigating the labyrinthine system of veterans affairs, hospital bureaucracies, and doctors who do little more than shrug when she raises concerns about Cleve’s dependency on painkillers. It is clear to Karie that Cleve is using opiates to dull a pain that is more than physical. She catches his first overdose, but what if she can’t save him a second time? Will she still be able to save herself?
Fugett’s story depicts an oft-overlooked reality of war: the experience of the many thousands of caregivers and spouses—mostly women, mostly young, mostly poor—whose lives have been shattered by battles fought against enemies abroad and against addiction at home. Tender, vivid, and laced with dark humor, Alive Day is at once an epic and engrossing love story, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and a powerful indictment of the sins of a nation.
©2025 Karie Fugett (P)2025 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Karie Fugett’s Alive Day is as true a war story as any I’ve read. Like war itself, it’ll break your heart.”—Elliot Ackerman, author of Uncertain Ground
“Karie Fugett’s voice sings with deliberate, horrific, powerful, beautiful knowing about war and the human toll it demands. Her words shine humanity on those of us who volunteered before we understood the actual cost, all while she stands before us an open wound, not begging for aid but demanding that we bear witness.”—Matt Young, author of Eat the Apple
“An essential, urgent reminder of the cost of war and a savage, gritty, and romantic monument to those who pay it . . . Karie Fugett’s memoir is deeply felt and disturbingly funny. I hope it pisses you off. We should be pissed off.”—Lauren Hough, author of Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing
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Story
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...
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Most depressing
- By Fudd on 06-09-25
By: Florence Knapp
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Silver Elite
- Silver Elite, Book 1
- By: Dani Francis
- Narrated by: Amanda Dolan
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Wren Darlington has spent her whole life in hiding, honing her psychic abilities and aiding the rebel Uprising in small ways. On the Continent, being Modified means certain death—and Wren is one of the most powerful Mods in existence. When one careless mistake places her in the hands of the enemy and she’s forced to join their most elite training program, she’s finally handed the perfect opportunity to strike a devastating blow from inside their ranks.
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THE READ OF THE YEAR
- By Me on 05-08-25
By: Dani Francis
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The Other Side of Now
- A Novel
- By: Paige Harbison
- Narrated by: Paige Harbison
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a tiny nervous breakdown at her thirtieth birthday party, she books an impromptu trip to Ireland. Specifically, to the village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamt of moving. When Meg arrives, the people in town don’t just recognize her, they seem to know her. She quickly—reluctantly—realizes she has somehow slipped into an alternate reality.
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epilogue tied it up in a satisfying bow
- By Nick V on 06-20-25
By: Paige Harbison
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Innovating Victory
- Naval Technology in Three Wars
- By: Vincent P. O'Hara, Leonard R. Heinz
- Narrated by: J. Rodney Turner
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world‘s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio).
By: Vincent P. O'Hara, and others
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Aggregated Discontent
- Confessions of the Last Normal Woman
- By: Harron Walker
- Narrated by: Harron Walker
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In sixteen wholly original essays that blend memoir, cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and a dash of fanfiction, Walker places her own experiences within the larger context of the pressing and underdiscussed aspects of contemporary American womanhood that make up daily life. She explores the allure and violence of assimilating into white womanhood in all its hegemonic glory, exposes the ways in which the truth of trans women's reproductive healthcare is erased in favor of reactionary narratives, and considers how our agency is stripped from us—purely on account of our bodies.
By: Harron Walker
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Detained
- A boy's journal of survival and resilience
- By: D. Esperanza, Gerardo Iván Morales
- Narrated by: Christian Barillas, Gerardo Iván Morales
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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D Esperanza was just thirteen years old when he lost his caregivers, his beloved grandmother and uncle. Since both of his parents were working and living in the United States, D was left on his own in a small town in Honduras. He quickly realized he simply could not make enough money to survive so he made the difficult decision to head north with his cousins and hopefully reunite with his parents in el norte. Together, the boys struggled to survive a long and treacherous journey through Central America and Mexico.
By: D. Esperanza, and others
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The Lost Voice
- A Memoir
- By: Greta Morgan
- Narrated by: Becky Levi, Greta Morgan
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2019, Greta Morgan was on the rise. She had toured with Vampire Weekend, collaborated with Jenny Lewis, and garnered critical acclaim with her own musical projects. But in March 2020, after contracting COVID-19, she was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder with no known cure that left her unable to sing. Her once crystalline voice now reduced to a hush, she saw her career come to an abrupt standstill.
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Love this book.
- By Donna Morgan on 06-05-25
By: Greta Morgan
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In the Ghost Shadows
- The Untold Story of Chinatown's Most Powerful Crime Boss
- By: Peter Chin, Everett De Morier - contributor
- Narrated by: Austin Ku
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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They were the most powerful gang in Chinatown. Like the notorious crime families of the Italian Mob, the Asian youth gang known as the Ghost Shadows carved out their own territory in New York's underworld and ruled those streets for decades. Their leader Peter Chin, a young immigrant from the outskirts of Hong Kong, not only found a new family among his fellow gang members but became one of the two most powerful men in Chinatown's history at that time. For the first time ever, the former leader of the Ghost Shadows breaks his silence in this tell-all to author Everett De Morier
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Peter’s story should definitely be heard or read.
- By The Boss on 06-15-25
By: Peter Chin, and others
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The Ghostwriter
- A Novel
- By: Julie Clark
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer, Katie Schorr, Josh Hurley
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their own home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets. Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she's offered a job to ghostwrite her father's last book. What she doesn't know is that this project is another one of his lies.
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Twisty
- By marianne on 06-11-25
By: Julie Clark
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Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter
- By: Samantha Crewson
- Narrated by: Lindsey Dorcus
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Thirteen years ago, Providence Byrd threw the family car in reverse and ran over her mother. Even though her mother survived, that single instant of teenage madness made Providence a felon and irrevocably altered her life. When her mother disappears years later under suspicious circumstances, Providence tells herself that returning home is her chance to find closure after a prolonged estrangement from her family. Never mind that this is only half of the truth: she’s also returning to finally confront her abusive father, Tom Byrd.
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Narrator did a fantastic job
- By Danielle Lynn on 05-26-25
By: Samantha Crewson
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Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
- From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption, and Separated Twins
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Joy Osmanski
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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On a warm day in September 2000, a woman named Zanhua gave birth to twin girls in a small hut behind her brother’s home in China’s Hunan province. The twins, Fangfang and Shuangjie, were welcome additions to her family but also not her first children. Living under the shadow of China’s notorious one-child policy, Zanhua and her husband decided to leave one twin in the care of relatives, hoping each toddler on their own might stay under the radar. But, in 2002, Fangfang was violently snatched away.
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Fact driven
- By Karen Tarnow on 06-16-25
By: Barbara Demick
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Sleep
- A Novel
- By: Honor Jones
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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From a dazzling new talent, the story of a newly divorced young mother forced to reckon with the secrets of her own childhood when she brings her daughters back to the big house where she was raised.
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Best “literary fiction” book in years
- By Lydia Paddon on 05-30-25
By: Honor Jones
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Erased
- What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us
- By: Anna Malaika Tubbs
- Narrated by: Anna Malaika Tubbs
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Across the world, patriarchy has oppressed women and denied their contributions, but every nation has its own unique gendered hierarchy. Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs applies her signature approachable yet rigorous analysis to define American patriarchy in this definitive and groundbreaking history. Humanity in the United States is determined by gender in a limited and flawed binary logic that is also always tied to whiteness. Tubbs shows how a fabricated hierarchy became so deeply ingrained in the country over time that it now goes unnoticed, along with everything it intentionally conceals.
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The Starving Saints
- A Novel
- By: Caitlin Starling
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration. Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin.
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Different
- By Momma on 06-16-25
By: Caitlin Starling
4 star review !⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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I finished it in two days. Compelling and thought provoking. A must read for 2025.
Wow. Truly remarkable writing and story.
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10* STARS!
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Dying to live
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Stunningly Accurate
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Gorgeous and grueling
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