Home Front by Kristin Hannah.

I can remember exactly where I was when I found out that my brother-in-law, Greg's youngest brother, was being deployed. I was sitting on the couch in the front parlor of my in-laws' pastel-painted gingerbread home. I excused myself to the tiny bathroom under the stairs and I cried.

I felt extremely conflicted. I was immensely proud of him and his service but he was also just a kid. He was just a kid who now would be dropped in to a situation far more adult than most of us will ever face.

We sent care packages and received letters. We hoped for his safe return. And through tours of duty in hostile lands, he did. He came home.

It wasn't until years later that I began to fully appreciate just what my brother and the scores of other men and women who serve our country are really offering with their service. They are volunteering to defend our safety and liberties. They are mothers and fathers and sons and daughters and they are willing to make the absolute ultimate sacrifice for every day people like you and me. It amazes me. I have trouble wrapping my mind around such a selfless act. How deeply blessed we are to have people willing to step up and fight for our country. These men and women – these kids – are the true definition of bravery, honor, and courage. I cannot believe that someone who has never met me is willing to die to protect the country we share.

Home Front by Kristin Hannah is about just that: duty and honor and bravery. As with all of her books, Home Front takes place in small Washington State town (in this case, Poulsbo). Jolene Zarkades is a 41-year-old mother of two, married to her one and only love, and next-door-neighbor to her best friend Tami. Jolene and Tami met over twenty years ago in the Army, when they both entered training to fly Black Hawk helicopters. Jolene is our hero from the first chapter, having overcome a horrendous childhood to make a happy life for herself (although, as we will find out, appearances can be deceiving).

Jolene and Tami both leave full-time Army life and enter the reserves when their children are born. They are knee-deep in happy, typical acts of domestic life when the call comes that they are being deployed to Iraq.

Home Front is an amazing story. Whereas it is most definitely a feel book, it is not necessarily a feel-good book. Jolene is forced to leave her daughters and a marriage in trouble behind. She is forced to contemplate her own death – that she might not come home – and desperately tries to impart life lessons to her oldest daughter through e-mails home. I pretty much sobbed my way through this novel. As a mother, I could sharply feel Jolene's pain at saying goodbye to her girls for a year and the loss she feels over all that she will miss in that time. As a civilian, I was terrified of the account of life on the base in Iraq and touched by the personal lives of Jolene's crew and their stories.

Hannah always does a wonderful job of researching the real life behind her fictional novels and Home Front is no exception. I felt a surge of pride for our country and our soldiers and a deep gratitude for the families of our soldiers who are left behind to hold the pieces together. It takes tremendous courage to be a serviceman or woman but the strength that it takes to send your loved one off to war and to keep life running at home is equally unfathomable. Home Front is a deeply emotional, honest look at military life from all sides and an excellent read.