62 pages • 2 hours read
Kristin HannahA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Michael, Betsy, and Lulu prepare the house for Jolene’s return. Betsy and Michael are both afraid of how much Jolene has changed, but Michael tries to convince his daughter that everything will be okay.
On the flight home, Jolene feels numb. When she lands, an ambulance takes her to a rehabilitation center. She arrives and sees her family waiting for her. Betsy accidentally knocks into Jolene’s amputated leg, causing Jolene to lash out in pain. Betsy and Lulu look hurt and afraid. After Michael checks Jolene in, he takes her to her room, which his family filled with flowers and a large banner Betsy and Lulu made. Conny enters and introduces himself as Jolene’s physical therapist. He settles Jolene into bed and leaves. Jolene tries to force herself to feel joy at being home. When Jolene hugs Lulu, she finally feels overwhelming love for her family and apologizes for her behavior. Mila and the girls leave the room while Michael tells his wife about their modifications to the house. Jolene tells him to leave, too tired to continue pretending she is okay.
Jolene wakes from a nightmare and the phantom limb pain in her missing foot. Conny appears, and although Jolene tells him to leave, he enters the room and helps her sit up. He tells her the pain is normal and offers some remedies to help her cope with it. Conny then tries to teach Jolene how to wrap her residual limb in bandages, but she panics and refuses to look at it.
Dr. Cornflower visits Michael in his office to discuss Keith’s case. He says he will testify that Keith’s PTSD influenced him to kill his wife. Dr. Cornflower then highlights the major elements of his report after meeting with Keith. He insists that Keith is not capable of forming intent and feels it is unfair to convict him of murder. Michael describes Jolene’s condition to the psychiatrist, realizing the similarities between Keith and his wife.
The next day, Michael gets the girls off to school and then drives to the rehab center. Conny meets him in the hallway and explains that Jolene is not trying to get better. Michael enters her room and sees that she is pale and scared. He encourages Jolene to do her physical therapy, but she tells Michael she sees his pity and knows he is only there out of duty. Michael refuses to back down and tells her she is being selfish. Jolene becomes angry, but Michael tells her the girls need her before leaving the room.
On Saturday, Michael, Betsy, and Lulu visit Jolene. Michael says the girls are there to help motivate her to get better. Jolene refuses to let her girls down, so she asks Conny what he wants her to do. Jolene agrees to learn how to wrap her residual leg as her family watches. Betsy runs to the bathroom at the sight of her mom’s leg, but Jolene successfully re-wraps it with Conny’s encouragement. Afterward, Conny takes Lulu to get some equipment. Michael continues to tell Jolene he loves her, but she refuses to believe him.
Michael takes the girls home and sees Betsy’s anger. He goes upstairs to talk to her and reminds her that Jolene is in pain and needs time. Betsy blames her mom for joining the National Guard and says she cannot forgive her.
During physical therapy, Conny teaches Jolene how to get into her wheelchair. She then does 200 sit-ups to build her core strength, using thoughts of her daughters to keep her going.
One morning, Michael goes with Jolene to her fitting for her temporary prosthetic leg. They go to a room where a woman measures Jolene’s residual leg and makes a cast of it. They then return to Jolene’s room. Michael tells his wife she can do this, but Jolene resists opening up to him.
When her temporary prosthetic is ready, Jolene practices standing. This achievement gives her hope for her future. She takes a few steps against Conny’s advice, unable to resist how good it feels to be in control of her body again. Jolene walks the length of the parallel bars, but when she sees Michael watching her, she stumbles. Jolene insists on walking to her room, and Michael helps support her. He then helps her get into bed and says the woman he loves is back. Jolene responds that that woman is gone.
On the day she is to return home, Jolene wakes screaming from a nightmare. Conny takes her to an exam room, where a doctor removes the cast from her right arm. To her relief, she passes all the range of motion tests. When Jolene returns to her room, an orderly gives her two letters. One is from a woman who lost her leg to cancer when she was 14. The other is from a female soldier named Sarah who lost her leg in action and might lose the other to infection. Sarah asks Jolene for advice, but Jolene does not have any to give.
After a long day at work, Michael drives to the rehab center. He goes to Jolene’s room and tells her she looks nervous. She says she is. He grabs her duffle bag and pushes her wheelchair to the car, unsure how to help her get in. Jolene senses his hesitation and tries to get into the car by herself. Conny walks through the parking lot to help her, reassuring Jolene that she is strong enough to overcome her fear of going home. He then shows Michael how to help Jolene into the car.
As Michael and Jolene pull into the garage, the security light turns on, causing Jolene to have a flashback. She forces herself to act fine as Michael helps her into her wheelchair. When they enter the house, Betsy and Lulu are excited and happy but see their mother is struggling. Jolene tells her daughters to wheel her around the house and show her all the changes they made for her. They eat dinner, and by 8 o’clock at night, Jolene is exhausted. The girls are disappointed in how different their mom is, and Jolene is ashamed that she cannot react how she wants to. Michael offers to help her into her new room, but Jolene refuses and goes to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When finished, she returns to her room and sees Michael still at the door. He helps her into bed and positions her residual leg. He then says they will eventually have to talk about their relationship. Jolene says he said everything before she left.
Jolene tries to sleep, but the quiet is unfamiliar after the noise of Iraq. When she finally falls asleep, she has her usual nightmare. Jolene wakes up and is determined to get her old life back. She eventually makes her way into the family room and watches the news. Michael and Lulu come downstairs, and Jolene says she will make breakfast and prepare the girls for school. Michael agrees and leaves for work, saying he will be home by 6 o’clock that night.
Jolene struggles to make oatmeal for Lulu and Betsy. Betsy becomes impatient and angry, causing Jolene to drop the pot of water and soak her daughter. When Lulu says she wants her daddy, Jolene lashes out in anger. Betsy returns from changing her clothes, picks Lulu up, and asks Jolene what is wrong with her. Betsy then sees the bus pass the house, making her even more angry. Jolene answers Betsy’s anger with her own and tells her daughter to make Lulu breakfast and that Mila will be there soon to take them to school. Jolene returns to her room and gets into bed.
Mila enters a little later and tells Jolene she cannot give up after one mistake. When Jolene tries to avoid physical therapy, Mila insists she go.
Michael spends his day selecting a jury for Keith’s trial. When he returns home at 6 pm as promised, he arrives to chaos. Betsy and Lulu tell him about Jolene’s failures that day. Michael promises them things will get better and tells them that they have to be patient. Michael goes to Jolene’s room and sees an open wine bottle on her nightstand. He thinks about waking her up to talk but decides against it. He spends his evening with his daughters and continues working after putting them to bed.
Suddenly, Michael hears a scream from downstairs. He rushes to Jolene’s room and watches her thrash around in her nightmare. He tries to help her, but she accidentally hits him. When she finally wakes, Lulu and Betsy are in the doorway watching her. Michael gets the girls to return to bed and sits beside Jolene. She admits she is struggling, and he says they will get her help.
The next morning, Michael finds Jolene in the family room practicing walking. She falls, but when he tries to help her, Jolene says she has to do this herself. She continues to walk despite the setbacks. Lulu and Betsy come downstairs, and Michael makes them breakfast. When the girls are on the bus, Michael takes Jolene to the rehab center. Michael tries to get Jolene to talk about her experience in Iraq, but she says she does not want to talk about it. Michael drops her off at the center and continues to Dr. Cornflower’s office. He tells the psychiatrist about his concerns regarding Jolene’s drinking and nightmares. Dr. Cornflower offers to speak to Jolene but assures Michael that Jolene’s behavior is a natural response to war. It is a bigger concern, he says, if the behavior continues longer than three months. Michael asks how to help her, and Dr. Cornflower tells him to get her talking.
Mila drives Jolene home from physical therapy and asks if she is okay. Jolene wants to tell her mother-in-law how scared she is, but instead, she just says physical therapy was difficult. Jolene goes into the house and has two glasses of wine. She then calls the Department of Veterans Affairs and asks to speak to someone about her nightmares. A man offers to make an appointment for her with a counselor in December, but it is only October. She says she will be fine and hangs up.
Jolene moves to the couch and falls asleep. She wakes to find Captain Lomand at the door with a bouquet. She leads him into the family room to talk. He tells her that her physical condition prevents her from flying again, saddening Jolene. When Lomand leaves, Jolene takes the wine bottle to her bedroom.
The middle school principal calls Michael and explains that Betsy has been in a fight. When he gets to the school, the principal says two girls were commenting negatively about female pilots, so Betsy punched them. The principal also says Betsy is not turning in her homework. Michael and Betsy leave the office. As they drive home, Betsy explains her side of the story. Michael then tries to reassure Betsy that Jolene will be okay and that they are all scared.
Jolene hears footsteps approaching her door, so she pretends to be asleep. She refuses to tell Michael she lost the career he has always hated.
Jolene’s return home introduces new dimensions to The Conflict Between Military Duty and Motherhood and Deployment’s Effect on Family and Relationships. The Jolene who returns from Iraq is profoundly different from the Jolene who left. The loss of her helicopter symbolizes the mental and emotional changes Jolene has undergone. After her tumultuous childhood, flying gave her a sense of freedom that she came to love. Even with Michael’s antagonistic attitude toward her military career, Jolene was always proud of her work as a female pilot, especially since female pilots are frequently disregarded and disrespected. After her helicopter crashes and she learns that she will never be able to fly again, Jolene feels she has lost a part of herself. Without her helicopter, she feels like a coward incapable of saving her crew. Thus, Jolene’s helicopter symbolizes her strength and courage; when it is destroyed, her belief in herself as strong and courageous is destroyed as well.
Having lost her sense of self, Jolene struggles to reintegrate into the family unit. Her physical and emotional trauma overwhelms her. While she does find some victories in this area—such as learning to walk with her prosthetic leg—she becomes deeply depressed by her physical limitations. She also blames herself for Tami’s condition and Smitty’s death and experiences recurring nightmares, making it harder still for her to return to the optimistic, happy mother she was before she went to Iraq. Hurt by her daughters’ fear and anger about her condition and frustrated by her inability to slip back into her old role in the family, Jolene must face the fact that her deployment has permanently altered her relationships with her children. Jolene’s difficulties show that The Conflict Between Military Duty and Motherhood persists beyond active service and deployment. Being in a war zone changed who Jolene is and how she relates to those around her, meaning she cannot simply reassume her role as a mother exactly as it was before she left. At the same time, her daughters have also changed because of her absence, bearing emotional scars from the separation and fear they experienced. They must forge a new mother-daughter relationship in the wake of Jolene’s deployment.
One more key barrier to the family’s reintegration is Jolene’s PTSD symptoms. This section of the novel multiplies the parallels between Jolene and Keith Keller, demonstrating some of the most common aspects of PTSD’s Impact on Soldiers and Their Families. Jolene and Keith share several experiences from their deployments. Both saw body bags containing pieces of their friends and fellow soldiers, and both lost close friends in battle. Their experiences when they return home are also similar. Like Keith, Jolene turns to alcohol and sleeping pills to numb her pain. Both Jolene and Keith have traumatic flashbacks triggered by ordinary parts of their homes. The garage light at the Zarkades house, for example, triggers a flashback to the moment when Jolene saw the hole in Smitty’s chest. Hearing metal on metal reminds Jolene of gunfire, and she has to fight to keep herself in the present and not succumb to her memories.
The differences between the way Keith’s and Jolene’s families respond to their PTSD symptoms, however, suggest that there are paths to healing and successful reintegration into family life. Keith’s family knew little about PTSD and had no tools to help him as he developed worsening symptoms. In contrast, Michael’s work on Keith’s trial helps him understand what his wife is going through and find ways to help and support her. When Jolene lashes out in anger and pain, Michael can recognize her behavior as the product of the psychological difficulties she is working through and offer her appropriate support. He uses what he learns working with Keith and Dr. Cornflower to remain patient and sympathetic. Michael also continues strengthening his relationship with his daughters as he helps them understand why Jolene is so different and what she must overcome. As Jolene declines, Michael becomes stronger, refusing to allow her to push him away. Michael’s devotion and determination demonstrate the importance of knowledge and empathy in helping PTSD sufferers and their families navigate the effects of the condition while preserving the family unit. Michael’s ability to contextualize Jolene’s behavior to their daughters protects the mother-daughter bonds through a difficult time, while his recognition that she is lashing out at him out of trauma gives him the strength not to give up on their marriage. Keith, on the other hand, stands as a symbol of military veterans who do not receive the help and support they need to overcome their trauma.
By Kristin Hannah