Born in Poison · A Memoir

Born in Poison — a Camp Lejeune toxic-water memoir.

Some wars you sign up for. Some you’re born into. I was conceived, born, and spent my first year on Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune while the drinking water was quietly loaded with industrial chemicals — the same kinds used in fuels, cleaners, and other products people are around every day, not something you expect in a family’s drinking water. From the outside, it looked like a normal Marine Corps childhood: a strong mother, a father who served, and a home built on faith, discipline, and showing up no matter how hard it got. While Marines were deploying overseas to fight a visible enemy, their families stayed behind in base housing, living in an invisible war that wouldn’t even get a name until decades later, when people finally started asking why so many were sick.

This book is about what long-term toxic exposure, carelessness, and slow action around contamination can do to real people — and how those decisions can echo into the health of children and future generations — told in plain, everyday language so that students, parents, veterans, and anyone who picks it up can understand. If you’ve ever wanted one book that explains Camp Lejeune without technical jargon, from inside the lives of people who actually lived it, Born in Poison is that book. It follows one Marine family closely, while also weaving in short survivor moments from other Marines, spouses, and children whose stories never made the news — people whose experiences were ignored, forgotten, or buried with them when they were gone. In the end, it’s a story about faith, family, and the courage of the ones still standing, and a reminder of how industrial chemicals — once they slip into our water, air, and soil — can quietly shape a whole generation and the ones that come after.