Homefront

Kristen J. Tsetsi's debut novel, Homefront, takes us into the life of twenty-six year old Mia, who faces a battle against anxiety, loneliness and despair when her boyfriend is deployed to Iraq. By alternating plot with a slices-of-life format, Tsetsi gives dimension to her book in a subtle and masterful way, contrasting her clear, precise, concrete prose — which makes up the majority of the book — with a quasi-stream-of consciousness style interspersed throughout. Her solid, seamless and detailed writing has the power to bring us into each scene. The result is an engaging, realistic portrait of a lover's life at the homefront. Sonia Reppe, BookPleasures.com

This is the untold war story.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman writes in his novel On Killing that soldiers experience a range of psychological effects resulting from war: "fear, exhaustion, guilt and horror, hate, fortitude" (51).

The loved ones they leave behind experience similar psychological traumas that create a very personal homefront war, one often misconstrued by the media — "as well as by those with no first-hand deployment experience — as simple "missing" and "worry."

Homefront sheds needed light on the highly under-documented internal battles suffered by those left waiting. Each true-to-life character in Homefront (Mia, the professor-turned-cabdriver whose boyfriend deploys to Iraq; Jake, the boyfriend; Olivia, Jake's mother; Denise, a disgruntled soldier's wife and friend to Mia; Donny Donaldson, an alcoholic, maybe-Vietnam veteran and Mia's cab fare) responds to the war in his or her own unique, and painfully intimate, way.