Far From War by Jeffrey David Payne

Economic ruin and partisan rancor have pushed America to the brink of a new civil war. Esther is caught in the middle, serving as a page in the United States House of Representatives when rogue politicians and military leaders stage a modern day coup d'etat. When the coup turns violent, she abandons Washington, D.C. for home. She must learn to survive on her own as transportation and financial networks fail, as the war disrupts food and water supplies. The result is a cautionary tale about political extremism and the true cost of war

Another highly enjoyable read for me. I was unsure in the beginning where the book was going to go with the main character, but fast learned why it was set up that way in the beginning. The main character is a page at the House of Representatives. I thought the rules and guidelines for being a page were very strict and unreasonable. I enjoyed the story much more after she left DC and was heading home. There is a great adventure here as she travels across the country to get back home. A lot of things block her way and cause her to change strategies to get home. Although I thought some of the people she came across and the reasons she was stopped were somewhat questionable as well, but although noticeable it did not deter me from loving this story.
Esther is a fantastic main character. I love that she fought back and even though she kept getting stopped every time we thought she was getting ahead she handled the situations as anybody would. There were a couple of situations that seemed a little to easy for her to get through because of money or somebody would just so happen to go out of their way to help her.
There were 2 things that paused me from rating this a 5 star book. The beginning of the story when she is in the House of Representatives, the strictness and somewhat sillyness of how that was run seemed a little out of place for a current day intern-like situation. The other was that there were certain parts in the book where specifics where used to describe things, band names, brand names etc I did feel sometimes that there were commercials snuck into the story that I personally would have rather just had generalized.
Far From War is a highly enjoyable adventure. A story of, politics, friendship, love and war. I have rated it as 4 stars and recommend this one, this is a book that I will read again. I liked the way the romance was handled and the people she met in her travels.
My favorite scene is when she was trying to use internet access to reach her family and was bothered by another person there so she punched him in the face. :D