Kristen Henderson
While They're at War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront

Kristin Henderson is married to a Marine Corps chaplain who has served in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Her portraits of military wives with spouses at war are both deeply engaging and hard-won. The author's insider experience allows her to uncover hidden and often difficult aspects of military culture on and off the vast bases that define many regions of America. It has earned her respect from military families as well as unique access to military staff. Henderson's story focuses on two very different women, Marissa Boots and Beth Pratt, as their husbands leave for Iraq and they both experience intense indoctrination into life alone at Fort Bragg, South Carolina. Extraordinarily revealing scenes from the lives of these women and other military families illuminate the truths of living in the shadow of America's military. The overwhelming effects of anticipatory grief; strongly enforced mores concerning infidelity; feelings of alienation from nondeployed military and the rest of the world; the effects of e-mail/cell phone/CNN culture; the too-frequent homecoming violenceall of these, Henderson shows, are powerful psychological realities for military families. Hidden Homefront offers moving and necessary testimony to all of us from the families who support America's way of war, and way of life.

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‘While they’re at war’

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