Starnes - The war at home: a wifes search for peace (and other missions impossible)

Advance Praise for The War at Home

by Rachel Starnes

Rachel Starness The War at Home navigates the joys, fears, compromises, and casualties that create the terrain of marriage. And if you are a military spouse, her memoir will reveal thoughts you never even knew you had. This is a wise and fearless book.

Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone

This is one of the most honest and genuine memoirs Ive ever read, as well as one of the most finely written. Theres not a false note in these pages. Rachel Starness story is at once both singular and emblematic, and as I read it I found myself wondering just how many others out there are going through experiences similar to the authors while lacking the means to express them as she does so beautifully in this riveting account. The War at Home is that rare thing: a book about the here and now that promises to last well beyond next month or next year.

Steve Yarbrough, award-winning author of The Realm of Last Chances and Safe From the Neighbors

Rachel Starnes has written elegantly and with deep feeling and insight about a common, but little written about and increasingly less understood, facet of American life. I found The War at Home a fascinating and compelling read.

Karl Marlantes, New York Times bestselling author of What Its Like to Go to War and Matterhorn

The War at Home invites us into two worlds not often glimpsedthe loaded culture of Navy wives and the painful doubts of early parenting. Haunted by her troubled past, Rachel Starnes navigates these two worlds with striking honesty, exposing her faults and forging a way toward a future worth fighting for.

Katey Schultz, award-winning author of Flashes of War

The War at Home, Rachel Starness stunning literary debut, is simultaneously harrowing and heartbreaking; an unflinching portrayal of the hidden costs of military service and the everyday challenges of building a life with her Navy pilot husband. This book is a profound narrative testament to the courage required to survive the cycles of connection and disconnection that the military life demands. Starnes takes a long look at her own childhood and personal history of relationships with men who leave, and the memoir explores her struggle to avoid a similar destiny for her two young boys. Filled with poignant lines and beautifully rendered scenes, the prose is also, at times, laugh out loud funny as Starnes stumbles through temporary jobs, friendships, and homes. Through her unfailing honesty, her humor, her courage on the page, and her willingness to write into the silent spaces, the reader finds a new wartime hero in Rachel Starnes.

Steven Church, author of Ultrasonic: Essays and The Day After the Day After: My Atomic Angst

The War at Home is an honest, probing self-examination of a family battling its own conflicts against the backdrop of a nation on perpetual alert.

Alison Buckholtz, author of Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War

The War at Home instantly charmed me. The messy and realistic life of Rachel Starnes pulls back the veil on one of the most selective and specialized communities of the worldthe wives of Navy TOPGUN fliers. But dont fret, there are very few finger sandwiches hereStarnes shows up to Wives Club meetings with six-packs of beer and a punk-rock attitude. With Texas wit and daughter-of-an-oil-rigger grit, she delivers a powerful memoir of military family life.

Anthony Swofford, New York Times bestselling author of Jarhead: A Marines Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE WAR AT HOME

Rachel Starnes received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from California State University, Fresno. Her essays have appeared in The Colorado Review and Front Porch Journal. She has lived in Scotland, Texas, Saudi Arabia, Florida, California, and Nevada, and is currently on the move again with her husband, two sons, a cat, and a puppy.

PENGUIN BOOKS

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New York, New York 10014

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Copyright 2016 by Rachel Starnes

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

An early version of Chapter 10 appeared as Hellcat Court in Colorado Review, Summer 2010.

ebook ISBN 9781101992074

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Starnes, Rachel, author.

Title: The war at home : a wifes search for peace (and other missions impossible) / Rachel Starnes.

Description: New York, New York : Penguin Books, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015038751 | ISBN 9780143108665 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Starnes, Rachel. | Navy spousesBiography. | New mothersUnited StatesBiography. | United States. NavyAviationAnecdotes.

Classification: LCC V736 .S72 2016 | DDC 359.0092dc23

Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the authors alone.

Authors Note: This is a story heavily rooted in the military community, specifically the Navys Strike Fighter Aviation community. This story is entirely true, but it is minenarrow, imperfect, and colored by the experiences of my pastand should in no way be viewed as representative of the experiences or opinions of other military spouses. The names and identifying details of people whose lives have touched my own have been changed out of respect for their privacy.

For all of the men and women serving in our countrys armed forces and for their families, whose service is no less important, I wish to convey my deepest respect and gratitude.

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For my boys, O and E
And for Ross
I love you