In the Gray Area is a Marine officer's reflection of his tour of duty as the leader for an advisor team embedded with the 7th Iraqi Army Division, beginning in February 2008.

Building on Folsom's earlier award-winning memoir, "The Highway War," which described his 2003 command of one of the first Marine light armored reconnaissance battalion companies to march on Baghdad, this edition reflects on challenges they and their Iraqi counterparts faced in their struggle to gain control of al-Anbar province.