Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Home Fires Burning really does look at military family life for better or for worse. Ms. Houppert does not sugarcoat the life of the military spouse like so many other books do, nor does she claim that military wives have made their own bed by choosing to marry someone in the military and therefore deserve to be unhappy. Given that such a small proportion of the population is being asked to carry the entire burden of the current conflicts - a book like this is important for civilians (particularly civilian defense leadership) to read so that they might understand the impact of the demands that conflict has on the society and way of life they claim to be protecting. I'm glad to see that Ms. Houppert is mature enough to say critical things about the military in a way that does not demean or patronize servicemembers or their families. We need more than parades, yellow ribbon magnets, and other trite penitance dished out by a complacent and disinterested civilian public. Military families need decent housing, good schools, and most importantly, the safe and speedy return of their loved ones.
On a personal level, this is the first book I've found that acknowledges the emotions and trials of women undergoing the strains of deployment. Other books, such as the oft-reccomended "Surviving Deployment" prattle on for paragraphs about keeping a log of your daily activities (as if any woman with a husband out of the country has the time) but offer only a parched sentance that vaguely addresses the nagging fear, lonliness, and frustration- feelings which the Army culture teaches us to keep to ourselves at great cost to our marriage and our own sanity. This book was a great catharsis.

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.

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!

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.

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.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, mainly because I was a military wife during the 1950s.

It was interesting for me to note the differences, and yet many things seem to always remain the same. I was fascinated by the fact that the Army now has "Basic Training for Army Families." When I first arrived at Camp Hood, TX (as it was then called), no one told the wives what we could or could not do. We got most of our information from our "caffe-klatching" neighbors. When writing the book Ms. Houppert interviewed many military wives, and I noted that several of them asked the same questions we did . "Why do our husbands have to leave for extended training so often?" I had only been married a few months when my husband went off to Virginia for training. I see that seems to remain the same.

My four children were raised as "Army brats," moving schools every couple of years. Since all of them are now college graduates, this didn't seem to have hurt them, and possibly was an advantage.

I enjoyed the book and it brought back many memories, good and bad. I have always been proud that my husband remained in the Army for 22 years before he retired.

A thought provoking easy to read book about the modern military family. As a military brat myself I thought it was interesting to discover there was so much dissension among military families. It also opened my eyes to my own mother's struggles during my father's service.

Even if you aren't a member or relative of the military this book is interesting to read. The plight of military wives during this war should be of interest to everyone. The way our military supports or doesn't support those families is critical to the current trend not to enlist.

Mostly I enjoyed the personal stories of the women interviewed for the book. Home Fires Burning describes the lives of military wives who are experiencing isolation, poverty, loneliness and doubt. The reader is able to feel the pain of the wife who lost her husband to war, the conflict of the woman who doubts whether we should be at war and the daily struggle of the very young mother who is trying to cope with her husband's deployment.

Great to 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!

As with Tanya Biank's book about Fort Bragg, Houppert is getting criticisms that sound suspiciously the same: supposedly this book is unpatriotic, untrue, and, since she has a connection to the military life, clearly the author has some emotional issues she's trying to deal with -- oh, and she should supposedly "take her own advice" and "suck it up".

Except (did the critics read this book? or just scan other reviews?)... at no time do I recall the author suggesting advice that amounted to "suck it up" -- quite the contrary! She has made a very articulate argument that, instead of attempting to get wives on board through "hearts and minds", so as to keep their husbands to stay in the all-volunteer force... that the military should improve pay, housing, child care, and make it a viable place for families to thrive.

She makes a great point that utilizing spouses as unpaid volunteers in key roles not only thwarts their careers (a place where they can gain confidence and community while their husbands are away), but also precludes a professional staff that could do a more thorough and regular job. Having seen what a mess our own family readiness group was due to poor volunteer leadership, I heartily agree. And by the way, she is very complementary about the work of the mortuary affairs and public affairs officers.

Strangely, the negative reaction to this book perfectly proves the point Houppert is trying to make, which is the pressure families and individuals feel to make the official military position their personal position. A book that parrots the accepted "truths" about family readiness, unit and community cohesion, and the sacrifice military personnel and their families make -- would be accepted glowingly and without hesitation. Again, if our military is fighting for our freedom of speech, of thought, of assembly, why so threatened that someone might not agree? For instance, in one chapter of the book, a wife is upbraided by friends when she admits she has issues with the war in Iraq - even though her husband shares her doubts. She is told by one friend, "I can't say anything because he is a soldier by heart and soul and wants to be there." ... the wife notes, "It's as if she won't allow herself an opinion because it might not be the same as her husband's!" But isn't her husband risking his life for our freedoms, like freedom of speech?

I'm a former military wife, with extended family in three - count 'em - three of the five uniformed services. I have had friends in the other two. I also recognized many of the situations in the book, because either I'd experienced them, or I knew others who had. I have a young relative who is already struggling to manage her passionate love for her career and her husband, with her concerns about the shoddiness and isolation of her base. I only wish that the book had come out before we left the military; I found it heartening. I'm going to send it to my relative in hopes it might help her.

I'm thrilled that some women have found military life to be the great love of their life, but it is often a complex juggling game for most of us, and disillusioning for others. That doesn't mean those who dislike the life are weak, inferior, wrong, or whatever. In describing this world, Houppert's words were well sketched, sensitive, and clear.

The author spent 3 years interviewing different military wives, but the way she writes makes it seem like several short college papers thrown together. Instead of solely concentrating on the person she writes about in each chapter, she throws in a lot of quotes, statistics and her own unanswered questions which get in the way of learning about the real-life military spouse. The profile of Crystal, a low-income teenager who's Army husband is gone in Afghanistan while she sits alone in a crummy apartment on base watching cartoons with 2 little kids is the highlight of the book. Other chapters seem to lead nowhere, such as one chapter about books in the 1940s that coached Army wives to take immaculate care of the house and never complain. I kept wanting to read the actual 1940s book rather than this book! I think the author is slanted towards dissing the military life, which she admits she fled without a look back after growing up an Air Force brat. She blames the military for downplaying domestic violence on base, for instructing soldiers not to tell their wives the gritty details about their war experiences, for telling the wives to not complain about anything, and for promoting itself as family-oriented when she feels it isn't. I don't think any of these issues is surprising. There's a few details about what the base housing is like, and what the Family Readiness Groups are like (support groups for the wives when the husbands are deployed), but if you don't have a background in military life you won't learn much here.