(typewriter keys clacking) (bell dinging) (peaceful music) - Hi, I'm Claire Gibson, and this is "Beyond the Point."

"Beyond the Point" is a novel about three friends who start at the US Military Academy at West Point in the year 2000 and about their friendship and what it takes as they prepare to leave for war.

- Will you tell us a little bit about "Beyond the Point?"

- "Beyond the Point" is a novel based on true stories of women who attended the US Military Academy at West Point during what I call the 9/11 years.

So it's from, I interviewed about 25 different women from the year 2000 to 2010, who were at West Point.

And this novel is really close to my heart, and it follows these three women as they start in the year 2000, and then they experience 9/11 at the Academy and their lives are changed forever, and they have to go on and face war and marriage and life after college with just a lot more challenges than the typical 24-year-old person has to face.

(peaceful music) - There's three main characters, Dani, Avery, and Hannah.

They're brought together, they have to find common ground and find respect for one another, and I think that's hugely important with female friendships.

It's also a story of loss in many ways, for all three of them, and the power of loss making us into our best person.

- We all lose people that we love.

Sometimes it happens in very unexpected ways.

And even if you're going to war, no one thinks they're going to be the one that doesn't come home.

I wanted you to feel, as a reader, that tension and that fear and that possibility it could be at any turn.

- [JT] For more of my conversation with Claire Gibson, please visit awordonwords.org.

I'm JT Ellison, keep reading.

- [Claire] So I grew up at West Point.

My dad was a professor, so I very much lived in kind of the shadows of everything that was happening all around me.

I got to see young people running around campus and jumping out of airplanes and blowing things up, and as a kid, it was a really magical place to be.