Home Fires Burning: Married to the Military-For Better or Worse

by Karen Houppert

Book Overview

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,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345461703
• ISBN13: 9780345461704
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Read this before considering marrying into the military.

I think this book does a fabulous job of giving an overall picture of the trials of military life for the people left behind. I was left with the question of whether all branches of the service have the same issues to the same degree or if there is variation between military branches and I think that would be an awesome topic to research. But the book stands on it's own two feet and gives people a real sense of what women feel and what they face, including those of us military spouses who don't fit the mold. I think this is a must read book for anyone considering marrying someone in the military. You need to know up front that it is a whole different world and that you have to be strong to maintain a sense of your own identity outside of being a spouse. People told me all these things before I got married, but I really didn't understand the difficulty of being isolated for my feminist viewpoints and the impacts it would have on my life. I love my spouse and I want him to have his career, while I am off having mine, but I also believe women need to approach the military with their eyes wide open.

Thank you Karen Houppert!

By page 7, I was hooked, by page 49, I was ready to write tha author a letter of thanks. THIS IS NOT A "HOW TO BE A MILITARY WIFE" BOOK! If you want to learn how to read an LES, go somewhere else. But, if you want to put the modern military wife into a historical context and see how, sadly, little has changed since the 1940s guides, this is an amazing book. The author starts with a woman who has lost her Navy SEAL husband, and the casualty notification system. Then she moves into stories of living on post/base, long deployments, the expectations put on spouses and their behavior, the economics of military life, domestic abuse, PTSD and the struggle for any form of "outsider" or person who may not share the views of the majority in the military. This book was a welcome breath of fresh air for any military spouse who gets frustrated with the limitations that a military career can often cause for the "dependent". The stories of women are interwoven with research and statistics effortlessly. Again, this is... well, it is an anthropological study of what it is like to be a woman married to an active duty military member in this day and age, with frequent deployments to the middle east, with the political atmosphere in the US being what it is, and the struggle that comes between the three ends of the triangle described in the book. We're supposed to step aside and let Uncle Sam come first in our marriages... but at what cost? I think every commander and NCO should have this as required reading before they schedule their first FRG meeting.

Excellent read!

Great insight into how the other half of today's military couples are coping when their partners are shipped off to war. Because of her own background as a military brat, Houppert knows the right questions to ask of the military AND of the wives left behind and has the credibility to tell these women's stories. I loved reading this book, especially the conclusion where Houppert explains what she has learned from these military wives. The timing on this book couldn't be better, anyone who has curiosity and compassion for the families of military personnel should read this book!

A Page Turner

Karen Houppert has taken what might be expected to be a rather depressing subject, and turned it into a page turner. This timely examination of the lives of military spouses and children is balanced, insightful and thought provoking. Several chapters, most notably the chapter on domestic violence, are so engaging, they deserve to be expanded upon. Structurally, Ms. Houppert has punctuated the narrative (interviews with current military spouses and reflections on those interviews) with quotes from "historic" military wife "self help" literature, a few telling statistics (not remotely enough for even the slightest groan), and her own memories of growing up as a military brat. The interplay is similar to what is achieved in the film editing of a Ken Burns documentary. I savored this book - with 20 pages to go, I put it down for several days- I so wanted it to go on a little longer.

A Timely Book that is a MUST READ!

I thought this was an EXCELLENT book! With all the focus by the media on the effect of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars on U.S. soldiers, there seems to be little to no focus on what it's like for the spouses of those deployed soldiers. Houppert does a great job of balancing the very personal view of each woman's day to day life with illustrations of how they are representative of a lot more military wives (using shocking statistics)! For example, the real women highlighted in her book range from gung ho pro military to peace activists and those who are in between. There is even an eye-opening section on domestic violence in the military. I do hope that this book will call attention to the plight of our soldiers' families and galvanize people to do something to improve the lives of our volunteer army and their conscripted families! A must read!