Fort Morgan Public Library

"The letters Kyla sent to her husband, Sergeant Richard Stroud, stationed a world away, spoke of a love that stretched across the ocean and held the young couple together. But when tragedy ended their marriage too soon, Kyla was left a widow with a newborn son. And Richard left behind only a metal box filled with his wife's declarations of love. Trevor Rule had been Richard's best friend. Returning home from military duty, he carried with him the...

There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families-intimate places not seen in the newspaper articles or politician's speeches. When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, You've Survived the WAr, Now Survive the Homecoming. It is eerily prescient.

A tale set in World War II Hawaii follows the experiences of a woman struggling to repair her life in the aftermath of her husband's mysterious disappearance, a situation that is complicated by malicious local gossip, her husband's secret activities and growing suspicions that her daughter knows more than she admits.

American women - American wives - have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era's mandate to be "helpmeets" to their ambitious husbands...

A journalist and essayist traces the difficult process of picking up the pieces of her life after it was shattered by the death of her husband, a Texan solider whose Apache helicopter crashed in Iraq.

"When you enlist in the United States Military, you don't just sign yourself up for years of duty, you also commit your loved ones to a life of service all their own. No one knows this better than Elaine Brye, an army-brat turned military wife turned military mom of four officers, each serving in a different branch of the military: Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy. Brye's father and mother met while both serving in the U.S. Army and her childhood...

Kate Thompson used to love Christmas. A few years ago, she would have been wrapping her presents in September and baking mince pies on Halloween, counting down the days and hours to Christmas. But that was before Kate's husband left for the Army and never came back. Now she can hardly stand December at all. Kate can't deny she's lonely, yet she doesn't think she's ready for romance. She knows her son Jack needs a Christmas to remember, just like Kate...

An all-volunteer military now means that most Americans don't personally know someone serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere, which means we also don't know much about the toll on their families.

At the height of the Vietnam War, Brian Holcomb, an ambitious young naval officer, discovers serious problems aboard the guided missile ship on which he is serving--problems which make the ship vulnerable to a potentially deadly air assault by the North Vietnamese, and which her captain seems unwilling or unable to address.