Breaking Cadence: One Woman's War Against the War

At a time when her college peers are debating what to major in, going to parties, and working jobs they can quit without threat of prosecution, Rosa is a secret traitor. She is a conscientious objector stuck in a National Guard uniform during the War on Terror. When the call comes to ship out, she faces the biggest quandary of her life: stay in an organization she has lost respect for to fulfill her duties, or follow her moral compass, no matter the consequences. This award-winning memoir is about the struggle to do the right thing when right and wrong is not black and white. It's about forbidden romances, moral mind games, and the Army's unnerving ability to function like a family. It's a story about a girl who made a bad choice and had to stand up against a male-dominated apparatus so powerful it has its own laws. It's about digging under those walls and emerging with something to say about the sanctity of youth and a freedom that is truly free. This 2nd edition includes two bonus chapters, a Readers Guide and pictures. In 2020 Breaking Cadence won the NYC Big Book Award for memoir.

Editorial Reviews

"It's hard to believe that a 17-year-old who can't vote or drink can go to war. Del Duca's experience as one of those teens ― who joined the National Guard to pay for college and then finds herself on the verge of being sent to fight a war she thinks is morally wrong ― is as harrowing as they come. I was riveted by her story and her strength."

―Julies Scheeres, author of NYT Bestseller Jesus Land and A Thousand Lives

"Breaking Cadence is a masterful deconstruction of the process of government exploitation of young people too green to know they are being used and too cornered by barren lives to do much about it." ―Joel D. Eis, author and conscientious objector

"Breaking Cadence is honest, beautifully written, and immensely compelling. Among many other things, it is a vital chronicle of military service, and of the young Americans who volunteer into it. It is a window into a world most civilians know little about, and must, if we are to reckon with the actual human costs of war. Step by painful step, the narrator becomes the person she was destined to be: a conscientious objector, an artist, and a writer who looks honestly at herself and the world, and who tells, in unflinching detail, the truth. The irrefutable evidence of her destiny is this compelling, moving, essential story."

―Matthew Zapruder, author of Why Poetry and Sun Bear

"From track star to soldier, from cadet to conscientious objector, Rosa del Duca maps a riveting account of military life and her uneasy metamorphosis in a book that's impossible to put down."

-Marilyn Abildskov, author of The Men in My Country

"Rosa del Duca's Breaking Cadence is a tribute to the notion that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. In her intense revelatory and liberating transformation from teen military recruit to conscientious objector, we follow del Duca as she navigates her contradictory emotions that puts her on a collision course with the most powerful institution in the world. Her determination not to fight in an immoral war in Iraq will hopefully serve as a warning and an inspiration for young Americans across this country. Bravo!"

―Medea Benjamin, activist and cofounder of Code Pink