Home Fires Burning
Married to the Military-for Better or Worse
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
As taps echoes across the cookie-cutter housing areas of upstate New York’s Fort Drum, the wives turn on the evening news, both hoping for and dreading word of their husbands overseas. It’s a ritual played out on military bases across the nation as the waiting wives of Karen Houppert’s extraordinary new book endure a long, lonely, and difficult year with their husbands far from home. Houppert, a prize winning journalist, spent a year among these women, joining them as they had babies, raised families, ran Cub Scout troops, coached soccer–and went to funerals.
The waiting wives include Lauren, twenty-six, whose Navy SEAL husband was killed in Afghanistan; Heidi, peace activist and Army wife whose life is a daily struggle with her conscience; Crystal, a nineteen-year-old raising two babies on a shoestring while her husband fights in the Middle East; Tabitha, who becomes the alleged victim of murderous domestic violence at the hands of her Special Operations boyfriend; and Danette, once an Army brat and now a devoted Air Force wife, who teaches, raises two teens, and fills her days with endless volunteer work.
Houppert shows that these women make some of the same sacrifices of their personal liberties as their husbands do and yet garner none of the respect accorded their spouses. Today, these military wives find themselves torn between an entrenched tradition that would keep them in a Leave It to Beaver family ideal and a modern social climate suggesting that women are entitled to more–a career of their own, self-determination, and a true parenting partner.
Meanwhile, the military concocts family-friendly policies and spends millions on new programs designed to appease military wives–and to maintain them as staunch supporters who will encourage their husbands’ reenlistment. The Army likes to say that it “recruits soldiers, but retains families.” And indeed, the future of the all-volunteer force hinges on the success of this mission. Though Army brass speak glowingly of the “Army Family Team,” this team is often deeply divided over strategy–and even goals.
A gritty, behind-the-scenes look at the tour of duty from the domestic front, Home Fires Burning provides a fascinating, fresh look at an enormous American institution and the families that live in its shadow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The daughter of an Air Force pilot makes a serious inquiry into the problems and pleasures of being a soldier's wife. Journalist Houppert's memories of her own military "insider" status and her keen reporter's eye combine to offer a nuanced portrait of the lives of a handful of women living near New York State's Fort Drum. Lauren can't believe that "the love of her life... had been lying in Afghanistan with a bullet from an AK-47 in his head while she had been shampooing the carpet"; Heather's husband lost an arm in Iraq and suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome; Crystal supports her husband's decision to go into the Special Forces, but can't help feeling abandoned. In cool, objective prose, Houppert shows the military community's strengths (it rallies around its own) and its weaknesses (there is, in military terms, a "spousal aggression issue"). Wives host potlucks and fund-raisers; some agitate for better housing; a few even participate in the antiwar movement. Indeed, old guard aside, it's harder to be a "true believer" these days, Houppert says. Blind loyalty is no longer the answer, she argues, and military problems from low morale and domestic violence to the abuse at Abu Ghraib suggest an institution "out of step with American values." Houppert may not offer much in the way of solutions, but she raises important questions.
Customer Reviews
Great Overall Insight
This book really got me thinking about this
Iifestyle (boyfriend is in the navy, spec ops)
I love the array and variety of people she chose to interview. This book is mainly for the army bound, but it provides good insight about how other people, experienced and less experienced, think about the military.
I would recommend this book.