The War at Home ─ A Wife's Search for Peace (and Other Missions Impossible)

A big-hearted and honest account of the challenges facing the wife of a Naval fighter pilot and TOPGUN instructor—a portrait of the strains of military life on families and a meditation on what it means to be left behind
 
Rachel Starnes is young, an aspiring writer, and uncertain of her path when she runs into her brother’s friend Ross and feels the beginnings of something new. What could have been a straightforward love story instead takes her life in a direction she never expected: an abrupt move across the country and a quick wedding squeezed in between training schools so that Ross could follow his dream to be a U.S. Navy strike fighter pilot.
 
Through Ross’s enrollment in flight school, a lengthy deployment, a shore duty with the Navy’s famed TOPGUN school, and the couple’s uncertain future, Starnes interweaves their emotional journey with memories of her own frequently absent father and contemplations on love and being left behind inspired by her parents’ marriage. The military lifestyle creates rifts between Rachel and Ross that can seem insurmountable: months spent apart, constant moves, and hampered communication. But every time, they find ways—whether it’s studying together for flight school exams or welcoming their sons into the world—to pull themselves back together. Rachel Starnes’s masterfully written debut is a reflection on military families and the realities of separation, endurance, and love that overcomes. At once universal in its truths and deeply intimate, The War at Home paints a portrait of a marriage that is challenging and ever-changing and, ultimately, inspiring.
 
Praise for The War at Home:

“Rachel Starnes’s The War at Home navigates the joys, fears, compromises, and casualties that create the terrain of marriage. And if you are a military spouse, her memoir will reveal thoughts you never even knew you had. This is a wise and fearless book.” —Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone
 
“One of the most honest and genuine memoirs I’ve ever read, as well as one of the most finely written. There’s not a false note in these pages. Rachel Starnes’s story is at once both singular and emblematic. . . . The War at Home is that rare thing: a book about the here and now that promises to last well beyond next month or next year.” —Steve Yarbrough, award-winning author of The Realm of Last Chancesand Safe from the Neighbors

Rachel Starnes was born in Austin, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas and has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fresno State University. She lives with her husband and two sons in Lemoore, California.