Stacy Bannerman

WHEN THE WAR CAME HOME: An Inside Account of Citizen Soldiers and The Families Left Behind (Continuum Publishing, May, 2006)

Reprinted with permission...

For the first time since World War II, 400,000 Army National Guard soldiers are being deployed overseas, leaving behind wives, husbands, partners, families, friends, and jobs. Stacy Bannerman is one of those wives.

Bannerman, high-profile career peace activist and founder/executive director of Reconciliation Works in Washington, chronicles her experience as a reservist's wife, speaking for and with the thousands of spouses and partners of Army National Guard Reservists actively fighting the war in Iraq. Part memoir, part wake-up call, WHEN THE WAR CAME HOME brings the plight of the reservists and their families to the public eye, and provides an insider's view of the battle on the American Home Front over the war that polarized a nation, determined an election, and defined an era.

WHEN THE WAR CAME HOME details a journey that began when Bannerman's husband, an Infantry Mortar Platoon Sergeant, was called to active duty, and takes the reader through the days to his deployment, his time in Iraq, milestones such as the 1,000th American death in Iraq, the first fatality in his unit, his first leave (Dec 04), the lawsuit against President Bush's Stop-Loss Order (filed December 6,2004), and through to the weeks before Lorin's return and his eventual homecoming in Spring 2005.

Of dozens of books written about war in Iraq, this memoir is one of the first to provide the reader with the emotional impact and often unreported realities of the home front experience, something shared by millions of women, and thousands of reservist spouses.

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