MWSA Review

Sisters of Valor is a unique and thought-provoking glimpse into the life, heart and mind of a soldier's wife, more specifically a Vietnam era soldier's wife.  
 
Having actually lived the experience of which she's writing lends author Rosalie Turner unimaginable insight into her characters -- insight that would otherwise be impossible.  This personal familiarity authenticates her story like nothing else could, shedding much deserved light on the silent sacrifices made by our nation's military wives.  
 
The reader is invited into the heart of the main character, Susan Mitchell, and her three fellow "sisters of valor," Rose Magda and Texanne.  The story follows the lives of these four friends as they endure the hardships of maintaining their homes, raising their children, and sustaining normalcy as much as possible while their husbands are deployed to the jungles of Vietnam in service to their country -- a country that is unabashedly vocal about protesting the war that these dedicated men are so valiantly fighting.   
 
As if being estranged from their husbands isn't bad enough, the wives have to deal with the social unrest and controversy over U.S. involvement in Vietnam, dissension that sometimes invades the confines of their very own families.  
 
All four of these wives have distinctively different personalities and varying ways of dealing with twelve months of deployment separation.  As dissimilar as they are, they share a common thread -- a bond of sisterhood.  They share the loneliness, the fear, the void, the despair, and the ever-looming threat of the knock on the door that will deliver the devastating news that their husband won't be coming home.  
 
When that knock came for one of these four women in the story, my heart broke as surely as the character's did.  I felt myself gasp as I read what she was hearing -- that her husband had been killed in the Republic of South Vietnam.  
 
This is a deeply poignant reading experience.  It honors military spouses of not only the Vietnam theatre, but all theatres of war.  It's a great book for military lovers, and lovers of romance alike.  
 
Turner has a wonderful way with words, and a gift for sharing the character's emotion with her reader.  This story will tug hard on the heart, tempt some tears, and rekindle poignant memories of the tumultuous era in American history that claimed the lives of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and 58,000 heroic American soldiers who paid the ultimate price for their service in Southeast Asia.

Reviewed by: Claudia Pemberton (2009)

Author's Synopsis

The '60's were a turbulent time in our country, and it was especially difficult for the service wife as protests against the war were so personal against the serviceman.  In SISTERS OF VALOR four very different service wives come together to find the support they need.  The story continues until today when the wives look at what the Vietnam Era meant to us as a country, as families, and as individuals.