When my father, Odysseus, and his men sailed off to the Trojan War, they were confident their gods favored a quick victory. Instead, the siege of Troy lasted ten years. After Troy fell, the survivors made their way home to Sparta, Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere in the ancient Peloponnese. Neither my father nor any of his troops arrived home with the rest. We waited for years as the news grew worse. Odysseus was dead, we were told,or imprisoned, or, worst yet, he had married another woman and abandoned my mother Penelope, my brother Telemachus, and me.


If he is alive somewhere, his thoughts may wander to Penelope and Telemachus, but he won’t be thinking of me. I am the daughter he doesn’t know exists. Odysseus went off to the Trojan War when his son, Telemachus, was barely old enough to walk. His wife, Penelope, was a teenage bride, and is now a young wife, mother, and queen who has to try to rule Ithaca without him.


I was born seven months after he left. I am a hero’s daughter and a princess of his realm, but I have lived my entire life without a father. I’m nineteen now, and still waiting.


All over the world, and throughout history children grow up as I have. This website will focus on the children of those men and women who have gone off to fight America's wars, and provide information and resources for all who care about military families and want to help.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Operation: Homefront

OPERATION: HOMEFRONT (Laurel-Leaf Books)
Here's another book I've run across that might make a good read for younger teens. Caroline Cooney wrote Operation: Homefront  (Laurel-Leaf Books, 1992) soon after the 1991 Gulf War. I’m not familiar with her work but I have been told that her books are hilarious at the same time they touch on serious issues. This one is about the Herrick family, whose mom joins the National Guard to earn some extra money, never thinking she will be called up.  When the first Gulf War starts, her unit is sent to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield. 
Joining the National Guard was seen as a joke by her rather spoiled, middle class family, but deployment is no joke.  They go through all the emotions and stresses any military family would, After the mother leaves, the family worries as they compulsively watch the news,  and their family falls apart until they realize their well being rests on all their shoulders now. By the end of the book they have come together and grown to see their mother is a different light as someone who has a life apart from her children, and plays a larger part in theirs than they had realized. 
School Library Journal applauds Cooney for dealing well with the role of women in modern warfare and its impact  “This is a tightly written story that moves quickly, giving lots of information about the war, its background, and its outcome, as well as offering a family story of struggle and survival,” it says. 

Posted by About AART at 7:42 AM

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