Review
"Mrs. Lieutenant" follows the lives of four Vietnam-era army wives as they arrive at Fort Knox to watch their husbands head off to war. While the prose is clean and (for the most part) error-free, it's also a little pedestrian--the author is caught up in small details, such as the height or a character or the exact date of the action. The booklet excerpts and descriptions of what's happening in the war (sending troops to Cambodia, Kent State shootings) don't add anything to the novel and instead give it more gravitas than it deserves. -- Amazon Top Reviewer
Follow four women as they leave their families and surroundings to follow their husbands into the United States Army. Share their feelings, their terror and their dreams as they try to be supportive and loving as they fear for the worst. This is a very interesting read that takes you into the minds of each woman and all women who are faced with this journey. The plot is quite compelling and well written. -- Amazon Top Reviewer
Four young women follow their husbands to officers' training school with little certainty about their social standing and even less about their husband's futures in this story set three years after the summer of love. Kim, Wendy, Donna, and Sharon have everything in common except their backgrounds. As a Jew, a black, a Puerto Rican, and a white southern woman, they make a convenient test case for friendship by default. Sharon, who grew up part of "an imagined, if not actual majority" is the most confident of the group, but struggles with being connected by marriage to "the war machine." Donna has already lost one husband to Vietnam and fears for her second. Wendy considers leaving her husband rather than lose him in combat, and Kim's orphaned youth has colored her judgment about her "white knight" of a jealous bigoted husband. Over the course of three months, the women share secrets and etiquette lessons, which are excerpted from the army-issued "Mrs. Lieutenant" booklet at the head of each chapter. The summer ends with one climactic event , underplayed by a mundane parting of ways by four friends. This slow-moving drama about picnics, diaphragms, and head-patting husbands may be an accurate depiction of the social milieu of Fort Knox in 1970 - but that isn't enough to sustain readers' attention. -- manuscript review by Publishers Weekly, an independent organization
Follow four women as they leave their families and surroundings to follow their husbands into the United States Army. Share their feelings, their terror and their dreams as they try to be supportive and loving as they fear for the worst. This is a very interesting read that takes you into the minds of each woman and all women who are faced with this journey. The plot is quite compelling and well written. -- Amazon Top Reviewer
Four young women follow their husbands to officers' training school with little certainty about their social standing and even less about their husband's futures in this story set three years after the summer of love. Kim, Wendy, Donna, and Sharon have everything in common except their backgrounds. As a Jew, a black, a Puerto Rican, and a white southern woman, they make a convenient test case for friendship by default. Sharon, who grew up part of "an imagined, if not actual majority" is the most confident of the group, but struggles with being connected by marriage to "the war machine." Donna has already lost one husband to Vietnam and fears for her second. Wendy considers leaving her husband rather than lose him in combat, and Kim's orphaned youth has colored her judgment about her "white knight" of a jealous bigoted husband. Over the course of three months, the women share secrets and etiquette lessons, which are excerpted from the army-issued "Mrs. Lieutenant" booklet at the head of each chapter. The summer ends with one climactic event , underplayed by a mundane parting of ways by four friends. This slow-moving drama about picnics, diaphragms, and head-patting husbands may be an accurate depiction of the social milieu of Fort Knox in 1970 - but that isn't enough to sustain readers' attention. -- manuscript review by Publishers Weekly, an independent organization
Product Description
They had their whole lives to look forward to if only their husbands could survive Vietnam. In the spring of 1970 - right after the Kent State National Guard shootings and President Nixon's two-month incursion into Cambodia - four newly married young women come together at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, when their husbands go on active duty as officers in the U.S. Army. Different as these four women are, they have one thing in common: Their overwhelming fear that, right after these nine weeks of training, their husbands could be shipped out to Vietnam - and they could become war widows. Sharon is a Northern Jewish anti-war protester who fell in love with an ROTC cadet; Kim is a Southern Baptist whose husband is intensely jealous; Donna is a Puerto Rican who grew up in an enlisted man's family; and Wendy is a Southern black whose parents have sheltered her from the brutal reality of racism in America. Read MRS. LIEUTENANT to discover what happens as these women overcome their prejudices, reveal their darkest secrets, and
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