Tanya Biank

I don’t watch TV so never saw the show “Army Wives.” I was searching for a book to fulfill a reading challenge for an online book group, and this title popped up. I thought it was going to be a sort of chick-lit romance. It’s not what I expected … it’s MUCH better.

This is a nonfiction account of four women married to men stationed at Fort Bragg NC. It covers two years beginning in Dec 2000 in the lives of these families. But what happens has ramifications for the military and show more for the entire American populace. The Sept 11 terrorist attacks occur during this period, and as a result, men and women in uniform are being deployed overseas. There’s uncertainty and chaos, especially for the military families. They are under increasing stress; the kind of stress that exacerbates the problems that affect some of their already strained relationships. Biank is, herself, the daughter of a career Army officer, and the wife of an officer as well. She was already covering the military beat for the Fayetteville Observer when these events unfolded. Her background gave her insight into the military, as well as access. She personally knew some of the soldiers and their families. She treats the women with respect, and yet casts a brutally honest eye on their stories, revealing strengths and flaws equally. show less

So I didn't really read the synopsis of this book before borrowing it. As I'm in the midst of planning to become an Army wife myself, I was looking for something interesting on the topic, and the title plus the picture on the front (soldier and bride kissing under the saber arch) seemed to be what I wanted. Truthfully, I was thinking it would be a little sweet, a little gossipy, and sortof like a slightly-more-serious version of the TV show Army Wives.

I. Was. So. Wrong. The book starts off show more with the grisly stories of the four Army wives at Fort Bragg who were murdered by their husbands in the summer of 2003. Of course, my future husband is currently stationed at Fort Bragg. Anyway, the whole book basically revolves around the stories of deeply troubled marriages made worse by the demands of deployments, and the one healthy and loving marriage ends with the husband being killed in a helicopter accident.

So, not an uplifting book -- in fact, fairly depressing across the board. I cried more than once. But in the end, I'm glad I read it -- the author's journalistic background helps her get the facts across, but she also does a great job of humanizing the people behind the "news stories." Definitely worth a read. show less

The author, a journalist by trade, explains in the prologue that she wrote this book after one summer saw five murders associated with Fort Bragg soldiers and marital discord. She then proceeds to present the lives of four army wives over the period of about a year, providing the reader with some interesting insights into army life that are not necessarily representative, despite the author’s claims that they are. The author asserts in the beginning that the lives of these four women are show more indicative of the lives of all army wives, but I think she is naive if she actually believes that. Albeit she attempts to get a good cross section by choosing women in various stages of their marriages with husbands in different ranks, but when one considers the many different personalities and unique situations in the world, it's not conceivable to think the experiences of these four women mimic those of thousands of other women married to men in the army (not to mention that women who are wives and in the army themselves are not addressed at all). The book should be viewed for what it is -- the stories of four individual women, which, in being told, shed some light on army life, particularly in terms of the effects it has on the family. That being said, I could not rate this book higher because I had some serious issues with the writing style. For instance, the author seems to flop between wanting to tell the women’s stories in a novelistic fashion and writing a book about her encounters with the army in a more journalistic manner. I personally found it annoying and unnecessary for the author to keep interjecting herself (personal pronouns and all) into the story. In addition, the author seems unsure whether she wants to write about these four army wives or about the ones that were murdered and consequently keeps going back to the murder cases (and basically repeats the same information over and over again). Speaking of repetition, the narrative is sometimes jumpy in its chronology and thereby repeats itself. The author also spends a lot of time writing about what the four army wives were thinking or feeling at a particular moment, as if she were literally in their shoes. At first I assumed she must have thoroughly interviewed all of the women to get this kind of information. However, later in the book it began glaringly obvious that she did not interview at least one of the women, so that made me suspicious about how she gleaned the other information used in the book (particularly those very intimate details). There were two additional minor annoyances with the writing style: 1) The author feels the need to refer to every black person in the book as “a black soldier” or a “black woman,” as if their most important feature is their skin color. She doesn’t feel the need to identify any other character by their race (as presumably they must be white or she would mention their skin color in their first description like with the African-American characters). I found this latent racism to be particularly irksome. 2) The author also feels the need to constantly describe (often in great detail) what the army wives are wearing at any given moment. It got excessive hearing about every item of clothing the women are wearing in each new scene and certainly didn't add anything to the narrative. Personally, I found the ending of the book a bit abrupt, although the epilogue with it’s “where are they now” explanations gave good closure. And finally, the narrator on the audio book was just not interesting or appealing in any way. Overall, it was an okay book but not one I would recommend because of its many flaws. show less

Biank has attempted to use atypical situations - murders, suicide and accidental death - as a means for exploring the typical lives of Army Wives, and fails spectacularly. Rather than giving any real insight into the lives of these women, she writes character portraits that are equally cringe-worthy and useless. The reader is left wondering whether this is due to Biank's writing ability or her subjects.

As an officer's wife, I cringed at the example she uses for a 'typical' officer’s wife. show more I honestly worry that someone would equate me with such a vain, self-centred character that would be at home on a TV series that blended 'Dynasty' with 'The Brady Bunch'. While my husband serves for a country other than the US, I find it hard to believe that what Biank tells us is in any way representative of the majority of officers’ wives in the US armed forces.

The experience of the wives of Army personnel are as varied as the individuals themselves – some chose to buy into the ‘Army life’ whereas some see it purely as a job their spouse does each day. Attempting to sell a book as ‘the’ insight into an experience that is so multi-faceted and individual, let alone basing it on such an extraordinary premise (the murders) means that this book is not one to be recommended to anyone wanting an insight into military life, whether it be of those in uniform or those that marry them. show less