While They're At War

Starred review from December 12, 2005
By the time Beth Pratt's husband returned from Iraq, they had been apart longer than they had known each other. Not long after Charlie Bootes's first deployment, his wife, Marissa Bootes, became a leader in one of the army's Family Readiness Groups, heading up phone trees and organizing girls' nights out while also managing a job and motherhood. When three uniformed soldiers came to Michelle Hellerman's door, she thought that they were picking her up for a comfort team; she didn't imagine that the terrible news was for her. "This is the war story you never hear," writes Henderson about what is actually a series of engrossing and often heartbreaking stories built from more than 100 interviews. The Quaker wife of a military chaplain, Henderson is a compassionate expert witness. For military families, her explanations of the official and unofficial support systems that serve (and sometimes fail) Fort Bragg's soldiers amount to a useful handbook. For civilians, the stories provide a revealing look into what it really means when a country goes to war. Though many of the soldiers Henderson writes about are serving in Iraq, she takes neither side in the war debate, and keeps to a style that is both intimate and professional. This is an emotional book that effectively plies the complexities of military life.