Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 158
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜
978-1-4422-6265-2 • Hardback • October 2017 • $44.00 • (£35.00)
978-1-4422-6266-9 • eBook • October 2017 • $41.50 • (£35.00)
Marna Ashburn grew up in an Air Force family, served five years in the US Army as a helicopter pilot after college, and then was a military wife for twenty years. Marna is the author of many books and articles on military life and military families, including Household Baggage: The Moving Life of a Military Wife (2006) and Household Baggage Handlers: 56 Stories from the Hearts and Lives of Military Wives (2008). She has been a featured guest speaker at Spouse Club meetings at military installations across the country, including Fort Leavenworth, Fort Drum, Fort Irwin, Fort Polk, the US Military Academy, Hanscom AFB, Carlisle Barracks, and the Naval War College, and has been interviewed several times on Army Wife Talk Radio (AWTN.com) and SpouseBuzz.com. She was a regular monthly columnist for Military Spouse magazine, and her other articles and essays were featured in publications such as Off Duty, Married to the Military, American Baby, Skirt!, The Military Times, SO Rhode Island, and the Providence Journal. Her books can be found at her website, HouseholdBaggage.com, which also links to her blog, The Chronicles of Marna.
1 Emotional Effects of Deployment
2 The Early Years
3 Managing the Rhythms and Demands of Daily Life
4 Communication, Telecommunication, and Miscommunication
5 How Deployment Affects a Family
6 Mishaps and Murphy’s Law
7 Death of a Family Member
8 New Traditions, New Normal
9 Fitting Back Together
Epilogue
Marriage During Deployment is a no-holds-barred look at the life of a mom and wife whose story will resonate with others who have struggled through the tangled web of emotions that go along with parenting and marriage during a deployment. The hope and pain is palpable on the pages of Marriage During Deployment, leaving readers wondering "What will come of this marriage? Will it survive deployment?"
— Janine Boldrin, Creative Director of Military Kids' Life magazine and/or Editor/Writer for military publications
Marna Ashburn writes with uncommon bravery and honesty about the struggles unique to military marriages. This book gripped me from beginning to end. Hers is a voice we need to hear; with hard-won perspective and clear-eyed candor, Ashburn lights the way to a better understanding of service and sacrifice.
— Rachel Starnes, author of The War at Home: A Wife's Search for Peace (and Other Missions Impossible)
Marna Ashburn speaks from bitter experience when she says military marriage requires careful attention from both spouses to survive and be healthy. She writes that a year-long deployment was the "death knell" to her own troubled marriage. However, her candidly related and hard-won experience could help other military couples to strengthen their own partnerships, not just for deployment but for all the challenges of military life.
— Terri Barnes, a military wife of 30 years; author of Spouse Calls: Messages From Military Life (a best-of collection of her award-winning column in Stars and Stripes); special projects editor for Elva Resa Publishing