You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon

,As veteran’s day approaches, it seems a fitting time to feature Siobhan Fallon’s recent book, You Know When the Men Are Gone. Fallon’s well-written, moving stories are eye-opening for most of us who have little connection to the modern military.

The main setting of Fallon’s loosely interconnected short story collection is the large military base at Ft. Hood, Texas. Through the stories the reader experiences the incredible burdens that a year-long deployment to a war zone places on a family. When the men are gone, a military base abruptly changes. Domestic responsibilities that have been shared suddenly become the wife’s sole responsibility. Military wives raise children alone. They handle home repairs and finances independently. They deal with serious health problems by themselves. Fallon integrates these and other seemingly routine situations smoothly into her stories.

Military wives endure the ever-present fear over the safety of their spouses. Compounding these fears, Fallon’s stories also expose anxieties about infidelity. Will a spouse become enamored with a female soldier while he is away? Will he return home with an exotic woman from a distant country?  There is uneasiness on both sides of a marriage. Soldiers worry that their left-behind wives will find someone else to fill their absence.

While many of us have observed scenes of joyous reunions when soldiers return to their families after long deployments, Fallon’s stories reveal the tensions beyond those reunions. After a year abroad a soldier may feel more connected to his fellow soldiers than his family. He may experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome or struggle to heal from a physical injury. A soldier and his family must try readjust to an integrated domestic scene. These stories show how extremely difficult these readjustments can be…and they are not always successful.

Siobhan Fallon has written You Know When the Men Are Gone from the unique perspective of a military wife, making the stories in the book feel particularly honest and powerful. She lived at Fort Hood during the two tours of duty her husband spent in Iraq and her experiences as a military wife helped to inspire this book. Fallon currently lives in Amman, Jordan, where her husband is now stationed.