"A brisk and entertaining romp through the unexplored world of military recruiting. Part portrait of small-town America, part sex comedy, part deadly serious reflection on how our country picks the women and men who go to war, this is the most surprising memoir you'll read this year."
— Brian Castner, author of The Long Walk
“Weidman drags readers into the high-pressure world of military recruiting, where every decision carries weight and where ambition, desire, and discipline collide. This bold memoir follows a US Marine recruiter during wartime as he seeks out the next generation to carry on the legacy—constantly finding himself at the crossroads of ambition, seduction, and responsibility. As he guides candidates through one of the most life changing decisions, he tests the limits of power, trust, and morality. The book is a must-read for anyone who has ever been recruited, and everyone who is crazy enough to be a recruiter.”
— Major Scott A. Huesing USMC (Ret), bestselling author of Echo in Ramadi
"Weidman delivers a candid, darkly humorous, and unflinching memoir of life as a Marine Corps recruiter during wartime America. Set against the backdrop of the Iraq War, this gripping narrative exposes the psychological toll, moral complexity, and relentless pressure behind the military’s front line of persuasion: the recruiting office. With sharp wit and raw honesty, Weidman chronicles the daily battles for quotas, identity, and integrity, revealing a world where success is measured in signatures, failure is deeply personal, and every month is another 'fighting hole' to survive. Both a deeply human story and a rare insider’s account, this memoir challenges conventional notions of service, sacrifice, and what it truly means to fight."
—Kali White VanBaale, author of The Monsters We Make and Release of Information
“The United States Marine Corps sells transformation—turning the most average of young Americans into demigods. Is it a religion? A cult? Nathan Weidman’s Thirty-Six Fighting Holes tells the unlikely story of Marine recruiters—evangelists tasked with prowling the nation’s malls and high schools in search of souls willing to endure hostile drill instructors, laughable pay, and the possibility of violent death—all for the right to be called Marine. A seemingly inhuman task. Yet Thirty-Six Fighting Holes tells a deeply human story—beyond the mythology—the highs, lows and above all, the price paid to recruit those young souls. It’s a helluva story.”
— Brian O'Hare, author of Surrender
Blurbs from Acclaimed Authors
About the Memoir
The few. The proud. The Marines. Do you have what it takes…not just to join them, but to talk others into joining? Can you occupy an isolated outpost—a strip mall, a small office, a lonely building on a busy street—and work the phones and set appointments and bring people in? Can you dress up in your sharpest uniform and venture out into the community, to colleges and high schools and even shopping malls, and talk to skeptical young adults about how the Marine Corps can make their dreams come true? And what happens when they hang up on you, or slam doors in your face? When they do it day in and day out? How will you deal with the disappointment when some are medically disqualified, and others conveniently forgot to tell you about, say, their felony conviction for crack possession? Or when young women and girls are eager to set appointments…not for the purposes you’d like, but because they want to hook up with a man in uniform? When some of them are stalkers, and others are still in their mid-teens? Can you do this six days a week, and keep at it long into the night, all while your wife is back at home, wondering what you’re up to? Can you keep at it week after week, month after month, coping with all manner of bureaucratic absurdity, working without any vacations so you can hit your recruitment quotas, flogging yourself to the point where your marriage and your sanity are in jeopardy?
And did we mention there’s a war going on?
That's right, can you do all of the above when three young men from the community—men your predecessors recruited!—have already died in combat? When you’ve seen their pictures and you know their names? When you don’t know if your recruits will meet a similar fate, but you do know that many of their parents are pissed that you’re even talking to them, and willing to take desperate measures to keep their precious young children from heading off to war?
Sergeant Nathan Weidman had to answer all these questions, and more. As a young Marine, he moved to the exotic locale of Southern Illinois in the mid-2000s, with his wife and toddler in tow. What followed was a dizzying tour of duty unlike any you’ve read about, devoid of the dangers of combat, with no risk of life (or even limb) but myriad ways for it to be permanently ruined. (To say nothing of the dozens of other lives that he had the chance to derail—or help redeem.) Hilarious, heartbreaking, nerve-racking, exhilarating, but never boring, it’s a story you’ll never forget, and it’s one you’ll race through...provided you have the courage to try. Do you have what it takes?
About the Author
Nathan Weidman is a debut memoirist who served twenty years in the United States Marine Corps—three of which were as a recruiter during the war in Iraq. After retiring, Weidman earned his MFA in writing and pursued his longtime dream of becoming an author. He currently resides in Noblesville, Indiana with his wife and two sons, where he teaches English and Composition at a local community college.
Memoir Release Date: 10 November 2026
More Blurbs from Acclaimed Authors
"Thirty-Six Fighting Holes is a memoir that is so expertly crafted it’s easy to forget that it’s nonfiction and not, in fact, a page-turning potboiler of a novel. Nathan Weidman’s account of his years as a Marine recruiter in southern Illinois shines a bright, revelatory light on an aspect of military life that few civilians have any awareness of, namely the extreme pressures that recruiters are under, especially during a time of war. Even though Thirty-Six Fighting Holes is nonfiction, I was regularly reminded of one of my favorite wartime novels, Joseph Heller’s classic Catch-22, about a bombing crew during World War II whose nail-biting missions have pushed one young airman after another to the brink of insanity … and then, oftentimes, beyond. Heller’s Italian Pianoso Island becomes a theater of the absurd, as does Weidman’s Carbondale, Illinois. Nathan Weidman’s book is filled with a cast of fascinating (real-life) characters, from hardnosed Marines with secrets, to guidance counselors with grudges, to nymphomaniac stalkers with a taste for men in uniform. Each chapter has the narrative integrity of a perfectly constructed short story, yet each chapter advances the memoir’s chronologically arranged forward motion. We experience Sergeant Weidman’s anxieties, his challenges, his self-imposed need for perfection; we sympathize, we worry, we root, we cheer – even though we have a sense of the person, the writer he has become to be able to write so eloquently, so clearheadedly, so probingly about his experiences as a Marine recruiter nearly two decades before. If you’re looking for a fast read, I recommend against Thirty-Six Fighting Holes: it is so well written and Sergeant Weidman’s story is so compelling you will find yourself lingering over each episode and wanting to understand each nuance of what it means to be a military recruiter, especially a Marine recruiter when one’s country is at war. It’s a stunning, eye-opening book, every page magnetic, every paragraph mesmerizing, every word masterfully chose."
– Ted Morrissey, winner of an International Book Award for Crowsong for the Stricken
“Reading like a mix of true-life Catch-22 and Bushido philosophy, a U.S. Marine's knife-edged vignettes reveal the moral hazards of a duty-tour as a recruiter—selling young people a warrior ethos while in a landlocked state of sex, drugs, office politics, and micro-management. The secret? Look for the right kind of crazy, both in yourself and peers, and in those few and proud others who will follow. An essential read—place Weidman’s book next to other modern Marine war stories and memoirs: Phil Klay’s Redeployment, Brian O’Hare’s Surrender, and Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead. Highly recommended!”
— Randy “Sherpa” Brown, co-editor of Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear and Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War
"Funny, profane, uncomfortable, and yet unexpectedly human, Nathan Weidman's Thirty-Six Fighting Holes shows the war behind the war—the strip-mall canvasing, high school hallways, cold calls, family strain, and impossible pressure that shaped the Marines who would eventually be sent to war. Weidman gives us a rare look at the recruiters tasked with selling service in wartime, and he does it with the kind of brutal honesty only someone who survived the billet could offer."
—Michael Jerome Plunkett, Author of Zone Rouge
"Nathan Weidman's Thirty-Six Fighting Holes is a moving memoir, funny and intense. A Marine recruiter in a college town, Weidman captures the vagaries of life when one's living is made sending young people to war. Moral questions are all over this book, as well as deep character and social studies. The pages fly along as Weidman tells us tale after tale. A totally gripping read."
– Tony D’Souza, author of Whiteman, The Konkans, and Mule
About the Publisher
Since its founding in 2012, Tortoise Books has published authors from across the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and beyond, while earning recognition from major trade publications like Booklist (which gave Nothing’s Ever the Same a starred review) and award-winning authors such as Rebecca Makkai (who said Jenny in Corona was “hilarious and devastating and profound”). The press is distributed by Publishers Group West, so it's poised to bring its titles to a still-wider audience while continuing its mission to publish memorable and engaging works that will stand the test of time. You can learn more at tortoisebooks.com or follow us on BlueSky @tortoisebooks.bsky.social—or better yet, read our books and see why Rick Kogan (of Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio fame) recently called us “…one of the best, most provocative, and rewarding publishing houses in the entire country.”
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