Review: Home Front by Kristin Hannah

Casee‘s review of Home Front by Kristin Hannah.

All marriages have a breaking point. All families have wounds. All wars have a cost…

Like many couples, Michael and Jolene have to face the pressures of everyday life—children, careers, bills, chores—even as their twelve year marriage is falling apart. Then an unexpected deployment sends Jolene deep into harm’s way and leaves defense attorney Michael at home, unaccustomed to being a single parent to their two girls. As a mother, it agonizes Jolene to leave her family, but as a soldier she has always understood the true meaning of duty. In her letters home, she paints a rose-colored version of her life on the front lines, shielding her family from the truth. But war will change Jolene in ways that none of them could have foreseen. When tragedy strikes, Michael must face his darkest fear and fight a battle of his own–for everything that matters to his family.

I had a hard time picking up this book for several reasons. I have found myself in the same place Jolene was (the marriage, not war). Twelve years of marriage is exactly how far I am in my marriage. I’ve never deluded myself that marriage is an easy thing, but when I found myself at a crossroads earlier this year it was a place I didn’t want to be. Now that my husband and I are finding our way back to each other and hopefully making a better marriage, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about a marriage failing that could have been mine. A good friend of mine lives across the street and her husband deployed for a year. I had a front row seat to how having a spouse/brother/friend deployed affects everyone around you. I was on the peripheral. Seeing it from the outside, but being on the inside because of my friend. If Kristin Hannah couldn’t catch that emotion or write how deployment affects families and even the towns of soldiers, I would have lost respect for her as a writer.

I’m glad to say that I love her as much as ever. She’s either a military [something] or she did her damn homework.

Jolene is a woman that was abandoned as a teenager but came out stronger for it. She met Michael when she went to social services as a seventeen year old girl and laid it out. She didn’t want to go into the system and she was almost eighteen. Michael was a legal aide and helped her. He was impressed by her strength and something else he couldn’t name. As she was walking out the door that day, he told her to come see him in a few years, but knowing he would never see him again.

When she showed up years later, they instantly clicked. Twelve years and two kids later, the shine has worn off. Jolene is happy with her job as a pilot in the National Guard and a mom of a twelve year old and four year old, both girls. She knows her marriage isn’t exactly perfect, but doesn’t know how to approach the problem.

Michael has learned that when Jolene confronts emotion, she always finds a way to be positive because she believes that everyone can be happy. Since his father died, Michael can barely abide Jolene’s attitude. He feels disconnected from his wife and unable to talk to her. Spending hours at work, he barely knows his kids or their schedule. There are few things that Jolene asks of him, but he feels that he can’t even meet her expectations there.

Then she gets orders that she’s being deployed to Iraq.

Michael has never been supportive of Jolene’s career as a Blackhawk pilot. He doesn’t consider their family a military family. He never considered that Jolene might go to war. When she tells him, he actually expects her to tell “them” that she can’t go because she has children to take care of. Her quiet, “They also have a father,” knocks him back, but he still doesn’t believe that she belongs in a war zone.

This book took place in 2005. Though war is dangerous for all soldiers, pilots were especially vulnerable. The only thing that brings her comfort is that she’s going with her best friend and fellow pilot, her fly girl, Tami. Jolene doesn’t expect to make it home alive. Michael is naive and in the dark enough about the war that when Jolene tells her family that her job is the least dangerous of all, they believe her. It’s after Jolene’s gone and Michael learns what she’s really doing over there that he realizes that she lied. His wife is doing one of the most dangerous jobs in Iraq.

When Jo comes home injured, she’s a different person. She’s not the wife nor the mother she was when she left. Michael understands, but her children don’t. Jo wants to lock herself away and drink herself into oblivion. Nightmares and PTSD are her nightly and daily companions. Staying away from her family seems like the safe thing to do. Scaring her kids and showing them that she’s not the mom she was is something she can’t let herself do.

Home Front is a book that will suck you in. Jolene was a hero to her country and her family. Her PTSD was so well written, I felt like I could be in her shoes and it wasn’t a pretty place to be. When she reached out for help to the VA and was told she would be put on a list, my heart hurt for her. Jo was lucky that she had the support she needed to get through her problems. Michael ended up being the rock she never thought he could be. Whether or not he believed in the war, he believed in the warriors fighting the war and finally understood the sacrifices they made.

This book was humbling to read.

5 out of 5 (I know, right?)

This book is available from St. Martin’s Press. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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