Homefront by Kristen Tsetsi

From the Publisher

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.

BookPleasures.com

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.

POD

Kristen Tsetsi is certainly in great command of language and craft, which should not be surprising-her fiction has been published in Storyglossia, and other respectable venues...Like the war front, Homefront is a place of struggle, this one taking place in the hearts and minds of those left behind, and like in real combat, feelings and relationships can become missing in action. This is a thoughtful and elegant book; the writing immersive, evocative, and polished; the structure reflecting the sense of dislocation and of something missing in Mia's life.

Storyglossia

Kristen J. Tsetsi's novel Homefront is an intensely intimate and affecting story of Mia, who's stuck inside a tornado of worry after her boyfriend deploys to Iraq. If you were moved by Tsetsi's STORYGLOSSIA Fiction Prize 2006 winning story "They Three at Once Were One," which was also recently named to the notable list in the Million Writers Award, this novel will immerse you deeper into the untold war story of what those waiting on the homefront experience while their loved ones are deployed...What I loved most about this novel is the way Tsetsi took risks with her portrayal of Mia, because throughout the novel Mia's behavior-at least from the outside looking in-seems shockingly inappropriate....This is not the saccharine portrait we are used to seeing in the media of supportive wives and girlfriends stiff upper-lipping their way through deployment. It has the feel, however, of the real war on the homefront.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0615139906
  
• ISBN-13: 9780615139906
• Format: Paperback, 332pp
• Publisher: Penxhere Press
• Pub. Date: February 2007
• Sales Rank: 343,791