Published 2012 by St
Martin’s Press
The following quote is
taken from the novel I am reviewing, an instance in which a mother is giving
some sage advice to her twelve-year-old daughter, a mother who as a child
herself experienced neglect and abuse and who endeavors to give the benefit of
what hard times have taught her to her child: “One smile can matter. Let people know you’re ready to be their
friend, and if they give you a chance, take it—don’t be afraid. . .You never
know when a sentence, a hello, can change your life.” The girl is struggling with the emotional
aftereffect of rejection and bullying dished out by some school mates of
hers. Not only are the words themselves
sound instruction to be coming from a parent, but they take on extraordinary
significance when they are read in the context of the book’s plot
situation. They are not being spoken in
person, mother and daughter sitting side by side on a living room couch. They are being transmitted to the child from
halfway around the world.
In “Home Front” we are
taken into the life of an American family upon which the Iraq War delivers a
stunning blow, only in this case it is not the father, the man of the family,
who is snatched away for military service, but the mother.
Jolene and Michael Zarkades
are residents of Washington State, married for well over a decade, parents of
two small girls, Betsy now twelve and Lulu now four. From all appearances their lives are nothing
out of the ordinary. He is a successful
trial lawyer in Seattle who commutes by ferry each day. She is a trained helicopter pilot who belongs
on a voluntary basis to the Army National Guard and always has since the two of
them tied the marital knot. She thinks of hers as the best part time job on the
planet. The early morning hours of the
day belong to her children. The
intervening hours are taken up in the air and she is there for them after
school at the end of the day’s maneuvers.
Husband and wife have fallen into a very typical pattern: the father
more wedded to his profession than to his family and the mother obliged to
provide the discipline and order and nurture for the children.
But all is not smooth
sailing for them. The routine of their lives has become an irritant for Michael
and his absorption in his work a growing irritant for Jolene, though most of
the time she is in denial about it.
Their sex life has ground to a halt and intimate sharing is a seldom
thing.
The rickety domestic
arrangement does apparently work—UNTIL the inception of the Iraq War. Jolene finds herself deployed into the
conflict and the convenient structure of their family life is decimated. The only way left open to Jolene for
providing guidance to her girls is through long distance e-mail letter, hence
the exchange I earlier referred to.
Suddenly Michael is faced with the frightening prospect of becoming the
sole parent on the premises. He greets
the news with disbelief and disorientation.
One sore point that this turn of events plays upon is his deep dislike
not only of Jolene’s military connection but of the military crowd among whom
she mingles on special occasions. Her
deployment forces him to face his dark resentments and to assume
responsibilities at home that he never expected to shoulder.
The author is Kristin
Hannah, a writer with remarkable range and astute imagination. This is the first of her novels I have read,
but I am certain it will not be the last.
This fictional family is a challenge to both heart and mind right from
the early pages and they take us on a journey of soul and spirit that will be
difficult for me to forget however long I am fortunate enough to remain in this
mortal body. You look in vain to find
the slightest wisp of soap anywhere in this narrative. You know you are in today’s
real world – a world that is not always kind to the innocent or to the hard
pressed working man or even to the committed energies of working mothers and a
world that can be raw and brutal. All
the characters, including Mila, Michael’s mother, Tami, a longtime friend of
Jolene’s, whom she met while in flight school and who gets deployed to Iraq
with her, and Tami’s husband and son, who live next door, are fully alive and
easily accessible.
Hannah has superior
knowledge of her characters; she knows what makes each of them tick, what drives
them and how they size up and measure their world. She never misses a single beat of any
heart. Not an angle or a tension or a
fear is neglected. It certainly could
not have been an easy novel to compose.
The tempo of the tale is wonderfully strong and consistent
But nothing gets
belabored. Her sense of economy is
faultless. She knows how long to linger
over a tumultuous scene and when to move on.
The story is told alternately from Michael’s and Jolene’s point of
view. The ordeal each goes through is
portrayed in the most precise, agonizing terms.
And “ordeal” is not a figurative term in this case. They are both purged through and through –
purged of idols of the mind, of the remnants of their earlier innocence, of
barriers long ago erected against growing pains, of rose-colored assessments of
evil and good, and of defensive habits of thought and action that past grief
and loss have engendered. The rupture of
their domestic arrangement is at times excruciating. Neither one is ever the same again,
especially after tragedy occurs. The war
leaves Jolene leveled in mind and body, after she loses a leg and has to sweat
out the coma into which the crash of her helicopter leaves Tami, who is much
more than just a friend. She has for
years been a staunch emotional buttress for Jolene, whose alcoholic parents
died in a car crash when she was only seventeen, leaving her on her own.
But the hardest
readjustment of all is required of the kids.
What they go through really shakes the pillars loose. How do you explain
to a preadolescent let alone a four-year-old why their mother, the woman who
gave them birth and nursed them, who provided the sturdy shoulder to which they
have always clung, must put herself in harm’s way for the expanse of a whole year? Hannah does not skim over their emotional
holocaust. The way she depicts their
crying spells drained me of tears at two or three
points. I am not sure how Hannah does
it, but I almost believe I can hear them crying right off the page. The dialogue she puts into their mouths
transcends literary limitations. Betsy
goes into rebellion; Lulu is assaulted by all kinds of sensitive little girl
fears; her whimpering is for real. As I
earlier pointed out, no soap was needed to drive things home. The struggle of Michael as he copes with
their needs tests him right down to the bottom layer of his being. How does he go on with his professional life
as a trial lawyer, supervising a whole law firm, and be present to his
children’s needs and crises without the assistance of their mother?
Actually it is his work as
a defense lawyer that delivers a strangely ironic twist to his struggle. It seems that his current major case has to
do with the defense of a man in his twenties who is charged with the murder of
his wife, a man who comes across at the beginning as remote and
uncommunicative, but when he starts to talk Michael discovers that he is an
Iraq War vet suffering from PTSD. This
opens a gigantic door of opportunity for Michael. His involvement in the case affords Hannah
the chance to air out the issue of postwar treatment of returning vets (but
without usurping the place of the personal family crisis in the book) and gives
Michael a handle on how to understand and minister to Jolene’s pathological
state when she returns from the same War.
Hers is almost as dire as that of Michael’s defendant.
If Jolene and Michael were
a married couple of solid rapport with each other, if they were two people
deeply committed to each other and to the sacred core of their marriage, that
would have been a plus factor that would make a significant difference. A deployed soldier needs to have strong
backing from the family s/he leaves behind.
But it so happens that Michael, practically on the eve of her departure,
presents Jolene with the news that he does not think he still loves her. Can we begin to imagine what it would be like
to depart for the battlefront with those words or words to that effect ringing
in the wife/mother’s ears. Jolene leaves
for Iraq doubtful that her marriage can be saved, though she has to leave the
girls with Michael, there being no other option and there being no opportunity
for further discussion or counselling.
The Army will not wait. Her
spirit is half crippled before she ever gets going and it is this uncertainty
that the readers of the book take with them on that journey, a shadow that
looms.
Yes, “Home Front” is a
novel of pungent emotional effect, very demanding on the human heart; I got
hooked very early and finished it in just a little over a week – something most
out of the ordinary for this slow reader.
Without letting any spoilers escape from the bag just let me say that
love and honesty do triumph.
Very timely! Most enthralling!
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To know
about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.
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