Home Front

Why Jolene and Michael Got Under My Skin

I started this one expecting a standard family drama and ended up thinking about it for days. Home Front came out in 2012 from St Martin’s, 390 pages, ISBN 9780312577209, and it centers on Jolene Zarkades, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the National Guard, and her husband Michael, a criminal defense lawyer, plus their two daughters in a small Washington town. Jolene is strong, competent, used to holding things together. Michael is charming and busy and a little checked out at home. Their marriage is already tired when the call comes. Jolene’s unit is deploying to Iraq. She has to go. He has to stay and keep the house running. From that first scene, I felt the floor tilt.

What grabbed me was how normal the opening feels. School runs, soccer, work stress, a twelve year old named Betsy who is all attitude and a younger girl named Lulu who still wants bedtime stories. Jolene flies because she loves it and because service is part of who she is. Michael loves his family but loves winning cases too, and he has let Jolene carry too much for too long. Hannah does not make either a villain. She shows two tired people who still love each other but have stopped saying so in useful ways. I saw bits of friends’ marriages in theirs, which made the deployment news hit harder.

I will say up front that Hannah writes big feelings without shame, and that style will either carry you or wear on you. For me it mostly carried, because the details about Guard life, notices, packing, wills, powers of attorney, awkward goodbye parties, felt researched and real. My criticism is that some early dialogue spells out the theme a bit loudly. Still, once the plane lifts, the book finds its stride and does not let go. The goodbye at the airfield with Betsy refusing to hug and Lulu clinging had my throat tight.

Deployment, Letters, and Two Girls Growing Up Fast

The middle first half follows two tracks, Jolene in Iraq and Michael at home, and Hannah cuts between them in a way that kept me turning pages. Jolene flies medevac and transport missions with her best friend and fellow pilot Tami Flynn, dealing with heat, dust, long hours, mortar scares, and the sharp focus it takes to land a Black Hawk under pressure. She writes home, sends care packages, tries to be both soldier and mother by letter and video call. Tami is a great foil, funny and blunt, loyal to the bone, and their friendship gives the war chapters warmth and snap.

At home, Michael learns fast how hard Jolene’s job was. He burns dinners, misses forms, fights with Betsy over clothes and curfews, tries to soothe Lulu’s nightmares about mothers not coming back. Betsy acts out in ways that feel true for a scared teen, slamming doors, testing limits, posting things she should not, pulling away from her dad just when he needs her close. Lulu wets the bed, clings, gets stomach aches before school. Michael’s law practice suffers because he cannot bill hours and be at pickup at the same time. He starts to see his wife clearly for the first time in years, and guilt mixes with pride.

What I appreciated is that Hannah does not make deployment look clean or noble in a simple way. Jolene is good at her work and believes in her crew, yet she sees ugly things, loses people, and makes split second calls that linger. Mail delays, bad connections, rumors at the FRG meetings, and careless comments from neighbors all add friction. If I have a quibble, it is that some war scenes lean on familiar images, convoys, markets, helicopters over sand, without digging as deep into Iraqi lives. The focus stays tight on the American family, which fits the title but leaves a gap. Even so, the home strain feels honest, and Michael’s slow growth from distracted husband to present father is satisfying to watch.

The Crash That Changes Every Rule in the House

Spoilers for the center of the book, because everything turns here. Jolene’s helicopter goes down. Tami is killed. Jolene survives with severe injuries, including leg damage and head trauma, and is sent home into a fog of surgeries, rehab, and grief. Hannah handles the crash and hospital stretch with care, not gore for shock but confusion, pain, morphine dreams, and the weird guilt of living when your best friend did not. Jolene comes home to a hero’s welcome she does not want and a body she does not trust. The pilot who could carry others now needs help to stand.

Grief drives the next hundred pages. Jolene cannot sleep, cannot stand loud noises, snaps at the girls, pushes Michael away, drinks more than she should, misses Tami with a physical ache. She replays the flight, wonders if a different choice would have saved her friend, hates the sympathy casseroles and flags. Betsy, who had just started to soften toward her mom from afar, now faces a stranger who cries or stares or leaves the room. Lulu tries to be good enough to fix it, which broke my heart. Michael tries to hold the line, juggling rehab schedules, school calls, and his own fear that the woman he relearned to love is gone.

This is where Hannah is strongest and also most likely to divide readers. She shows post traumatic stress and traumatic grief in plain scenes, flashbacks in a grocery aisle, panic at a helicopter on TV, rage at a well meaning neighbor, numbness during what should be happy moments. Some readers may find it heavy or repetitive, since Jolene circles the same pain for a while. I found the repetition true to how grief works, though I wished for one more scene with a counselor explaining tools rather than Jolene white knuckling alone. Tami’s death is the wound the whole second half probes, and Hannah does not look away from it.

Coming Home to a Marriage That Has to Relearn Touch

With Jolene home but not healed, the marriage becomes the front line. Michael wants his wife back and wants to help, but help looks like hovering or fixing, and Jolene reads it as pity or control. They fight about therapy, about drinking, about parenting, about who gets to decide what is best for the girls. Old cracks widen. Michael’s past flirtation with work and his absence during hard years get thrown back at him. Jolene’s habit of handling everything alone makes her refuse the very support she needs. Intimacy feels awkward and risky. They love each other, but love without trust and patience curdles fast.

Hannah gives both sides room. Michael’s chapters show a man trying to be steady while scared and exhausted, making mistakes like confiding in the wrong person or pushing too hard for normal. Jolene’s chapters show a woman ashamed of needing help, furious at her broken leg and brain fog, terrified she is failing her daughters the way she feels she failed Tami. The couples scenes that worked best for me were small, washing dishes without talking, sitting on the porch while Lulu reads aloud, a careful apology that does not demand instant forgiveness. Those quiet beats sell the bigger blowups.

My fair criticism is that a late marital crisis leans soapy. Without spoiling too much, a temptation and a secret stretch the story toward melodrama just when the rehab plot was holding me on its own. I understood why Hannah added it, to test whether this couple chooses each other under stress, but I did not need it. The core question was already strong enough. Can two people who changed apart change back together. I kept reading because I cared about the answer, yet I rolled my eyes once or twice at the timing. Friends who love big twists may enjoy it more than I did.

Betsy, Lulu, and What Kids Carry When Parents Serve

What lifted this above a simple couple story for me was the attention to Betsy and Lulu. Betsy is twelve going on sixteen, smart and furious, and her arc feels painfully right. She starts resentful about the deployment, acts out at school, fights with Michael over freedom, then swings to clingy guilt after the crash. She loved Tami like an aunt and now has to grieve while also fearing her mom. A scene where she finally says she is mad at Jolene for leaving and mad at herself for being mad captures teen honesty better than many books manage. She does not get fixed quickly, and I respected that.

Lulu is younger, softer, and her pain shows in her body and routines. She wants her mom’s lap, her dad’s stories, her sister’s attention, and the old order back. She draws pictures of helicopters, asks if moms can die twice, hides notes in Jolene’s rehab bag. Hannah writes her without making her too cute or too wise. She is a kid trying spells and bargains to make the house safe. Michael’s learning curve with her, from awkward braids to patient bedtime talks, gave me some of the book’s warmest pages. These children are not props. They carry the deployment in their sleep, grades, appetites, and friendships.

If I have a wish, it is for more school and community texture. Teachers, coaches, military kid groups, and neighbors appear but often to serve the main plot. I wanted one steady outside adult for Betsy, a counselor or coach who stays past one scene. Still, the family system feels whole. You see how Jolene’s injury ripples to homework and how Michael’s court loss ripples to dinner. Betsy’s letter near the end hit me hard because it sounds like a real kid choosing love over pride. That choice sums up the book’s hope without pretending wounds close clean.

Where the Book Soars and Where It Strains Belief

Where it soars is in readability and heart. Hannah writes smooth, propulsive chapters, short scenes, clear stakes, dialogue that moves. She clearly talked to Guard families and medical people, because the details about packing, FRG meetings, rehab exercises, meds, and VA maze frustrations ring true. She respects service without turning soldiers into posters. Jolene is brave and flawed, Tami is funny and brave, the crews are competent and scared. The home chapters respect caregivers too. Michael’s exhaustion, his fumbling growth, his love for his daughters, all feel earned. I finished the last fifty pages fast, with tears, wanting these four to make it.

Where it strains is in tidiness and speechifying. A few courtroom and kitchen speeches state the moral a touch too plainly, and one late legal subplot resolves a bit too neatly to carry the weight Hannah gives it. Readers who prefer spare prose may find the emotion high. I am middle ground. I winced at a line or two, then got pulled back by a true image, like Jolene tracing her scar while Lulu sleeps against her good side. The book wants you to feel and to forgive, and it pushes. Most of the time I was glad to be pushed.

I closed it thinking about how home is not a place you return to unchanged but a set of habits you rebuild. Jolene learns to ask for help. Michael learns to stay. Betsy learns to speak hurt before it hardens. Lulu learns that fear can shrink when named. I did not agree with every choice Hannah made, and I wanted more gray in a couple of twists, but I believed this family. If you want a story about service that stays with the people waiting and the people returning, this one earns its pages. Keep tissues near for the final homecoming that is not a parade but a kitchen table.

She flew off to save others and came home needing rescue, and her family learned how to carry her without letting go.

I kept thinking about the title after closing. Home front usually means civilians waiting, but Hannah shows two fronts that never separate. Iraq follows Jolene into the kitchen, and the kitchen follows her into Iraq through letters and calls. Michael fights his own battles with forms, school, and rehab schedules. Betsy and Lulu fight to stay kids while carrying adult worry. No one gets to be only a soldier or only a parent. That overlap is the honest part, and it is why the 390 pages felt lived in rather than plotted.