You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
This book is a set of loosely connected stories about the soldiers and their families at Fort Hood Texas.
Each story is beautifully crafted with a different view of military life from inside this tight knit community. In the title story, a wife waits for her husband’s return living in base housing, trying not to intrude on her neighbor’s lives, but the quiet around her with the absence of the soldiers makes it all the more difficult. In another story, the horrors of war, which cannot be shared, create a chasm between those in the war and those who wait. This is a powerful work that will leave the reader thinking about all who serve including those left behind.