Hamburg veteran finds peace in the pages of his debut novel

Jim Servi has done a lot of hard things in his life. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. He served 21 years in the military and rose to the rank of colonel. He watched friends and soldiers die in combat. But sitting down to write about all of it may have been one of the hardest things of all — and ultimately, the most healing.
Servi, who grew up in Merrill and now lives in Hamburg with his wife Angie and their three sons, will appear at the T.B. Scott Free Library on Monday, May 11, 2026, from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. to discuss his debut novel, Forever Changed, a work of historical fiction that explores the lives of ordinary people from rural Wisconsin and travels to the countryside of Afghanistan during and after the September 11 attacks.
It is a book that took more than five years to write, grew out of dozens of personal journals kept during overseas deployments, and ended up giving its author something he had been searching for since he came home from war.
“I struggled quite a bit when I came home,” Servi said. “It took me a long time to kind of work through that. Trying a lot of different things; some helped, others didn’t. I just found that writing this was the thing that kind of brought it all together and ultimately gave me peace.”
Writing, he said, gave him a place to process grief, loss, and the complicated weight of things that are beyond a soldier’s control.

“I could finally accept some bad things that happened, some things that were out of my control, and really reflect on everything that I’ve been through, others have been through, [and] why,” he said. “And then [I could] get to the point where, okay, now I can put this behind me and I’m just going to focus on going forward. I would say the book was the main catalyst for peace. It’s almost like I typed the last word and I was like, okay, now I’m ready for the next chapter in life.”
That last word came in early 2020. The first seeds of the story were planted around 2015, when Servi looked back at the dozens of notebooks he had filled during and after his time overseas and thought there might be something more there than personal reflection.
“I always kept a journal when I was overseas and when I returned, and at some point I had filled dozens of different notebooks,” he said. “I thought, this is very helpful for me to write. It always has been. Maybe I want to take this to another level and look at these and kind of weave them into a story.”
The writing process was anything but linear. Life with three kids, a full-time position as a professor at UW-Stevens Point, and an ongoing role as an Army Reserve colonel attached to the Pentagon kept interrupting the work.
“Sometimes I would write quite a bit and other times life would take over and it would be three months and I hadn’t written anything and I had to get back to it,” he said. “That’s why I’d say it wasn’t exactly a straight line.”
Forever Changed moves between perspectives — including a character from Afghanistan and an American who relocates to New York City just before September 11 — weaving together lives that might seem worlds apart. Servi said he drew on his military experience but also pushed himself to understand points of view he hadn’t lived firsthand, researching Afghan culture and history and relying on survivor accounts and documentary interviews to shape the New York scenes he wasn’t there to witness personally.
At its heart, though, the book is about the people he served with and lost.
“I had one of my soldiers that was killed in Afghanistan. I had another good friend that was killed in Afghanistan,” he said. “A lot of the book is writing their experiences and understanding them and seeing if there was a path that their fates could have changed. And the book kind of shows those different paths.”
The historical framework of the story, he said, is as accurate as he could make it.
“To the best of my knowledge, yes,” he said of the historical references. “In the beginning I put, if there are any inaccuracies, it’s on me, but I tried to research them and make them as accurate as possible with what I could find.”
Published through River Shore Books, a Wisconsin-based company, and available on Amazon and other platforms, the book has found an audience that Servi said he did not fully anticipate — the families of veterans.
“Veterans don’t always talk about their experiences, but their families are interested,” he said. “A lot of the comments that I’ve gotten are like, ‘Thanks for writing this. I never really understood what my spouse went through, [or] my daughter, my son, but now I have a better understanding, even though they don’t talk about it.’”
That response is part of what pushed him to start doing community events after years of letting the book sit quietly on a shelf.
“The reason I wrote this is I wanted to tell the story and get people talking,” he said. “I decided to start doing some community events.”
He held events in Athens and in the Wausau area last year and said he specifically wanted to come to Merrill this year.
“I consider Merrill my hometown,” Servi said. “I moved there when I was very young, grew up there, graduated high school there.”
His family still has deep roots here. His parents, Dave and Darla Vachavake, live just outside of Merrill. He coached Little League and youth football in town for years. His connection to this place, he said, is something he has never let go of, even if the school district boundary lines eventually pushed his own kids in a different direction.
At the May 11 event, Servi plans to read from the book, share some of the experiences and research behind it, and spend most of the time in conversation with whoever shows up.
“My favorite part of doing these is the questions and the conversations that come,” he said. “That lets me kind of share stories within what people are interested in or what they’re curious about.”
He said the book will be available for purchase, and he will be happy to sign copies.
The T.B. Scott Free Library is located at 106 W. 1st St. in Merrill. For more information, call 715.536.7191.