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Home Front � Kristin Hannah
Book on CD read by Maggi-Meg Reed
1*

Jolene Zakardes is a wife and mother and a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. She also carries the baggage of her early life with two alcoholic parents. It was their deaths, a few months before she graduated from high school, that led her to join the Guard; alone and without resources she found a “home� and a “family� in her unit. Her best friend, Tami Flynn, is a fellow pilot, and her next-door neighbor.

Jolene prides herself on creating a calm, loving and organized home for her family. She never raises her voice, because she knows how damaging discord and chaos can be for children. When her attorney husband, Michael, misses important events she makes excuses for him to assuage her daughter’s disappointment (not to mention her own). And she turns to Tami to talk about the things that worry and concern her.

But her carefully orchestrated life is turned upside down when her unit is deployed and the two women are sent to Iraq. “We won’t be in battle,� she assures her family. “I’ll be flying VIPs from place to place.�

Hannah is somewhat like Jodi Picoult in that she picks issues to address in her books that might be in the public’s eye, and which could lead to serious discussion. This time she’s focusing on PTSD in veterans. However, Hannah relies on emotional manipulation to tell her stories, and that just makes me roll my eyes. And no matter what issue she’s addressing, her plotting is pretty formulaic.

Maggi-Meg Reed does a pretty good job of reading the audio version. Her diction is clear and she really nails the “whiny tween� voice of Jolene’s older daughter. Too bad she didn’t have better material to work with.



LINK to my review

Thanks! It turns out I put this on my want to read shelf in 2018 after reading one of her much better books, so I have now taken it off.