No More Dodging Bullets: A Memoir about Faith, Love, Lessons, and Growth - Overview

No More Dodging the Bullets, is a fascinating memoir by Amy Herrig. It is an honest, in-depth airing of the author’s chaotic life and her self-discovery. Amy gives you a glimpse of her childhood years with her atypical family, who were neither dysfunctional and destitute nor upper class wealthy. However, her parents were of the hippy generation and philosophy. Amy was reared in the small town of Clifton, Texas, in the 1980s. She realized that her liberal hippy parents had a very different ideology and belief system than her friends’ parents. Amy is honest in her telling of her teen years; she writes of her pot-smoking and experimenting with harder drugs. She makes a conscientious decision to break from that lifestyle and does. However, she is still surrounded by those who are users because of the Gas Pipe business her parents own. The Gas Pipe stores were highly profitable “head shops,”  that sold legal smoking equipment and supplies.

Amy becomes a co-owner with her father, and as one of the executives of the businesses becomes exceptionally wealthy. She marries and has twins, a boy, and a girl. An ensuing divorce complicates her life a bit more. But her life then takes an unexpected new direction as she embarks “on the most intense and grueling journey of self-discovery and growth and a metamorphosis like never before.” Without warning, the DEA had agents simultaneously “bust” all of their businesses, confiscate assets and freeze finances as well as ransack her home.

The DEA claims their stores are selling illegal substances and portrait them to the media as big drug pushers. She and her father know that they had not intentionally or knowingly broken the law by selling an illegal substance. She faces a huge list of federal charges and even a brief jail sentence, and then it is all topped off with a diagnosis of breast cancer.

A heroic fighter, Amy fights for her physical life through breast cancer treatments and alongside her attorneys to fight the unfair legal charges. Amy’s struggle with the federal charges is an education for the reader, as she describes being incarcerated with other women wearing yellow, chains, and handcuffs. She worries about spending her life in prison while her children grow up without her. Out on bond, she wears an ankle bracelet for a year and is restricted to her home. She studies the law with her father and attorneys, learning more about the trumped-up charges which they’re determined to fight.

Throughout Amy’s four-year-long battle for justice, she is adamant of her innocence of the charges. She is also very defensive of her actions. She admits to a minor infraction involving the drug laws and is willing to make restitution. Her memoir is one of self-discovery and the realization that she had made a bad decision, even though she didn’t believe it was illegal. She admits, “There are legal laws, and there are moral laws. I had broken a moral law…” She was reevaluating herself, what she believed in, and learning about “patience, compassion, grace, and forgiveness for myself and others.”

No More Dodging the Bullets is a very moving look into Amy’s personal life and experiences. Readers will find encouragement and inspiration through her story of extreme challenges. This is a captivating and creditable story about a woman with unflagging strength and spirit that will have you immersed right from the beginning.  The author shows an exceptional ability in describing many intriguing moments in this page-turner account of her eventful life.  No More Dodging the Bullets will take you on a compelling and gripping journey with a triumphant finale. It's also a must-read for anyone who thinks our Federal Justice system is fair and honest. Read this book!