Found Art: Discovering Beauty in Foreign Places

Written by Leeana Tankersley

Narrated by Leeana Tankersley

Found Art is a memoir of the year author Leeana Tankersley lived in the Middle East with her Navy SEAL husband during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After a whirlwind courtship, a move across the world, and the unexpectedly difficult re-entry from a year overseas, Leeana finds her life (and her soul) has been changed forever.With an artist’s eye, Tankersley uses each chapter to piece together moments and memories from her journey—a handwritten note from Kuwait, a braid of fringe from a Persian rug, an original poem, a bit of basting thread, a swatch of black silk from a borrowed abaya, a mesquite leaf, a Navy SEAL trident, a receipt from the Russian-Georgian restaurant on Louisiana Street—to create a work of unexpected beauty.Found art emerges … a literary collage created from salvaged stories of loss, hope, and belief that just might change your soul, too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Nov 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9780310773405

Leeana Tankersley

Leeana Tankersley is a native of San Diego who received her BS from Liberty University and her MA from West Virginia University. Leeana and her husband, Steve, live in Coronado, California, with their twins, Luke and Lane. Found Art is her first Book.

Reviews for Found Art

[cemming_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An honest, thoughtful journey of the delicate relationship with self, Found Art is a book born of strange circumstance. Leeana Tankersley's memoir chronicles her whirlwind engagement to a Navy SEAL officer, the couples' brisk but memorable first married year stationed in Afghanistan at the brink of the gulf war, and ends with the shift to 'normal' life back in the U.S. — or as regular as it gets for the wife of a SEAL during wartime.As she tries to process the bleary pace of navy life and reassess her goals, Leeana is forced to address her personal roadblocks. Loneliness, social anxiety, how God works, the existence of war, constant fear of loss, self-confidence, and death are all issues Tankersley wrestles privately, all smeared across these pages.An easy read with some profound messaging, Found Art has some overworked prose where Tankersley mimics a freshman angling for extra points, though she's not lacking in sincerity. Her voice is calm and seasoned, just not quite settled or secure with itself. Which, at its core, is what she addresses here: coming to terms with oneself is a lifelong process.