Battles of a Different Kind

Simone met her husband in college.  She grew up in California and came from an anti-military, anti-gun family.  When her boyfriend talks about the military, she really doesn’t hear him.  But it is not a passing interest for Andrew.  More and more, he knows this is what he wants, must, do with his life.  How they resolve this chasm between them is one of the main themes of the book.

Simone finds herself living in military housing knowing no one.  Almost immediately, her husband leaves for training.  In the two years they are in Georgia, if her husband isn’t deployed, he is in a training designed to keep him combat ready.  He is rarely available.

Slowly, she finds companionship in the only people who are available, the wives.  At first, they seem very different, but they have an overwhelming common interest.  They share in the anxiety about a husband on deployment; they deal with the difficulties of transition when he returns; they are lonely without old friends or family nearby.  Eventually, Simone becomes part of a tight knit support group; they are the ones she turns to when in trouble; they are her “family.”

This is a memoir heavy on philosophy.  Simone tries to understand why her husband loves this life; she tries to reconcile her own feelings about living on money made from aggression and killing. She tries to find her own identity in a life where she has little control.

It is also a book heavy on feelings as the author creates a vivid picture of what this life was like for her and the others, dealing with the minutiae of Army life, the frustration of living at the Army’s whim.  Depression and anxiety are major companions.

This is an informative story about a way of life too few Americans are acquainted with.

Duniway came to Oregon as a teenager in the mid-1800s, brought by an adventurous father and unwilling mother.  Both the mother and a younger brother died on the Oregon Trail.  This imposition of the father’s will on the family with its devastating results must have been a catalyst for her views on women’s position in society.

Duniway blossomed into one of those high energy women. She became a farm wife and had six children.  In addition, she taught school, owned a school, wrote twenty-two novels depicting the plight of women, wrote for a newspaper, owned a newspaper, ran a milliner and seamstress business, became interested in women’s suffrage, travelled extensively, gave thousands of speeches and lobbied continually for women’s right to vote.  Whew!  I had to put my feet up just reading about her.

Kirkpatrick does a thorough job of depicting the attitudes towards women’s proper place in the culture of the times. Her position that they were infuriatingly unfair is exactly right.  Nevertheless, a whole book of complaint after complaint about injustice gets tiring in a different way. 

This story about all that women endured to get the vote and the many setbacks that befell them was a timely read during the Democratic convention.

This juxtaposition of rural Arkansas life with the occasional pop of detailed medical knowledge provides the setting for Thomas Holland’s The Evil to Come.

After another seemingly random shooting, Elmore finds himself continuing to say “I don’t know” when his neighbors and fellow professionals ask about the cases. There are few leads. Jewell Faye, his long-time secretary, who knows everyone in town and everything they ever did, is his pre-computer county-wide web of knowledge.

The book is very descriptive, possibly too much so, of small-town Arkansas characters.  They chew tobacco, are besotted with football; the women bake pies when there is trouble; but they are not stereotypes; they are complex sympathetic people.  The plot with its very surprise ending shows the long reach of childhood abuse and hatred. 

I’m the sort of reader who sometimes likes to read the end first. That way I don’t gallop through the story but can enjoy the richness along the way. In this case I was glad I did because I slowed down to enjoy the Arkansas flavor plus spotted some very well-integrated clues that I never would have seen.

Is it sexist to call this a “man’s” book?  It is full of gun details, military memories, and male law enforcement. The few women are wives or the secretary (granted, it is the 1960s). Nonetheless, it has a very strong sense of place, an intricate plot, and well-developed characters, all of which would appeal to anyone.