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A wife's description of the home life
Houghton Mifflin
February 2006
336 pages ISBN: 0618558756 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Kristin Henderson is a journalist married to a military
chaplain who has served in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan,
and Iraq. In While They're at War, she draws upon the trust
she's earned from military families and her unique access to
military staff to give us a "powerful, revealing, and
sometimes painful . . . look behind the scenes" (Booklist)
at the modern military's untold story. We first meet Marissa Bootes and Beth Pratt, new Army wives
undergoing intense indoctrination on Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, while their husbands are fighting in Iraq. Their
stories unfold to reveal often hidden aspects of life on the
homefront. Through gripping storytelling, we see families
battling the overwhelming effects of isolation and
anticipatory grief, the strongly enforced codes concerning
infidelity, their feelings of alienation both from military
staff and from nonmilitary citizens, and the harrowing
impact of e-mail/cellphone/CNN culture. Moving scenes bring
to life the special struggles of children and those who
teach and care for them, as well as the toll that combat
exposure takes on families, especially if it erupts into
homecoming violence. Finally, Henderson reveals the
life-changing solidarity experienced in an informal support
group like Fort Bragg's Hooah Wives. While They're at War is an indelible portrait, too, of
virtually invisible figures such as homefront fathers
raising teenagers alone. We meet the chaplains, social
workers, and psychiatrists dedicated to helping military
families cope. And, through Henderson's brilliant reporting
from Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Ward 57, we are given
a searing view of the wounded and their families confronting
changed lives. "In a country of nearly three hundred million people,"
Henderson writes, "only two and half million serve in the
active duty armed forces. . . Yet in our American democracy,
the warriors themselves don't get to decide when
[sacrifices] are to be made. Civilians make that decision.
It's up to our civilian Congress to declare war. . . and
it's up to the civilians who elect those leaders to pay
attention, to make sure that the cause of the hour is worth
the sacrifices being made on their behalf." While They're at
War is moving and necessary testimony for all Americans,
from the military families who make possible America's way
of war and way of life.
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