Homefront: Stories - Paperback

by Victoria Kelly (Author)

​Winner of the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Best Academic Press!
Foreword INDIES 2024 Silver Winner for War & Military (Adult Fiction)!

Inspired by Victoria Kelly's experiences as the wife of a fighter pilot during three wartime deployments, this collection follows women whose lives have been impacted by war and military service as they struggle with their fragile ideas of home.

In "Prayers of an American Wife," a Navy wife grapples with loneliness when she discovers that her neighbor, also a Navy wife, is having an affair while their husbands are deployed on the same aircraft carrier. Tensions rise in "The Strangers of Dubai" as a soldier on leave tries to buy his wife a souvenir from an Afghan vendor. After attending eight funerals with fellow military wives whose husbands died in the Iraq war, the protagonist in "Finding the Good Light" divorces her Navy husband and tries to start a new life as a movie star. These, along with the eleven other stories in this collection, explore the emotional landscape of the resilient women who remain on the homefront.

Kelly's stories offer readers an intimate, eye-opening look into the sacrifices and steadfastness of military family members.

Author Biography

Victoria Kelly is a graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is the author of Mrs. Houdini: A Novel, named a People Magazine Best New Book and a USA Today New and Noteworthy Book, and When the Men Go Off to War: Poems and Prayers of an American Wife. Kelly's writing has appeared in Best American Poetry and dozens of national and international literary journals. She lives in Maryland with her husband and their five children.