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    Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives
    Unavailable
    Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives
    Unavailable
    Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives
    Ebook362 pages7 hours

    Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives

    By Tanya Biank

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Under the Sabers is a groundbreaking narrative detailing the complex personal challenges Army wives face, presenting a provocative new look at Army life. Tanya Biank goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life and shows what it is really like to be an Army wife—from hauling furniture off the rental truck by yourself at a new duty station when your husband is in the field, to comforting your son who wants his dad home from Afghanistan for his fifth birthday—she takes readers into the hearts and homes of today's military wives.

    In the summer of 2002, Army wives were in the headlines after Biank, a military reporter for the Fayetteville Observer, made international news when she broke the story about four Army wives who were brutally murdered by their husbands in the span of six weeks at Fort Bragg, an Army post that is home to the Green Berets, Airborne paratroopers, and Delta Force commandos. By that autumn, Biank, an Army brat herself, realized the still untold story of Army wives lay in the ashes of that tragic and sensationalized summer. She knew the truth—wives were the backbone of the Army. They were strong—not helpless—and deserved more than the sugarcoating that often accompanied their stories in the media.

    Under the Sabers tells the story of four typical Army wives, who, in a flash, find themselves neck-deep in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and Army wives. In this fascinating and meticulously researched account, Biank takes the reader past the Army's gates, where everyone has a role to play, rules are followed, discipline is expected, perfection praised, and perception often overrides reality. Biank explores what happens when real life collides with Army convention.

    Biank describes what it means to be a wife and mother in a subculture that is in a constant state of readiness for war. In this hard-hitting and powerful book, Biank takes a close look at the other woman—the Army itself—and its impact on wives, marriages, and home life. This story of strength and perseverance is an eye-opener for those who have never experienced military life and an anthem to those women who each day live the "unwritten code."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 7, 2006
    ISBN9781429901680
    Unavailable
    Under the Sabers: The Unwritten Code of Army Wives
    Author

    Tanya Biank

    Tanya Biank is a Fulbright Scholar, an award-winning journalist, a former reporter for the Fayetteville Observer, monthly columnist for www.military.com, and a contributing writer for Military Spouse Magazine. Mark Gordon Productions and Touchstone TV have developed a pilot for a one-hour TV series based on the book. The daughter of a career army officer, Tanya lives in Virginia with her husband, an army officer assigned to the Pentagon.

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    Reviews for Under the Sabers

    3.5/5

    13 ratings8 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      So I didn't really read the synopsis of this book before borrowing it. As I'm in the midst of planning to become an Army wife myself, I was looking for something interesting on the topic, and the title plus the picture on the front (soldier and bride kissing under the saber arch) seemed to be what I wanted. Truthfully, I was thinking it would be a little sweet, a little gossipy, and sortof like a slightly-more-serious version of the TV show Army Wives.

      I. Was. So. Wrong. The book starts off with the grisly stories of the four Army wives at Fort Bragg who were murdered by their husbands in the summer of 2003. Of course, my future husband is currently stationed at Fort Bragg. Anyway, the whole book basically revolves around the stories of deeply troubled marriages made worse by the demands of deployments, and the one healthy and loving marriage ends with the husband being killed in a helicopter accident.

      So, not an uplifting book -- in fact, fairly depressing across the board. I cried more than once. But in the end, I'm glad I read it -- the author's journalistic background helps her get the facts across, but she also does a great job of humanizing the people behind the "news stories." Definitely worth a read.
    • 5/5
      Excellent non-fiction description of military life.
    • 3/5
      Not a great read, NOTHING like the TV series, the characters names aren't even the same. Can't say much about Army life, but being married to an Air Force Officer isn't remotely like the lives of any of the characters in this book.
    • 3/5
      I read this book initally because I enjoyed the television series, and it turned out to be nothing like the series, quite disappointing really!It is written by journalist Tanya Biank after a seires of 4 murders carried out on an army base "Fort Bragg" in America over the course of one Summer. It tells the story of the wives of the army officers over the course of a year, and they're eventual deaths at their husbands hands.It was Ok but I did find it a bit sickly sweet at times, the discriptions of the feelings between the couples etc. We were told about the clothes they wore, the cars they drove and the type of furniture in their houses!! All a bit much I felt.The author jumped around the story a bit too much for my liking, back and forth, which was a little confusing, telling about her own time in the Army and her own opinions on the officers and their spouses.The book was alright but I can only score it 3 stars as it wasn't a book you could get your teeth into. I do not think I would read another of Tanya Bianks books if I am honest.
    • 4/5
      Life in the military - as a member of the military or family member - is not the same as civilian life. This book presents life as it is, not as the TV show presents it. (Never have I known a general's or colonel's wife to befriend a junior enlisted man's wife, in military life.) This book does not pretend to have all the answers and does not presume that military wives are all the same or that all are perfect or imperfect. It does not blame the army for the murders of four army wives, nor does it exonerate the murderers simply because they were military. All in all, a good read: imperfect, but not presenting itself as the absolute definition of being an army wife.
    • 4/5
      I don’t watch TV so never saw the show “Army Wives.” I was searching for a book to fulfill a reading challenge for an online book group, and this title popped up. I thought it was going to be a sort of chick-lit romance. It’s not what I expected … it’s MUCH better. This is a nonfiction account of four women married to men stationed at Fort Bragg NC. It covers two years beginning in Dec 2000 in the lives of these families. But what happens has ramifications for the military and for the entire American populace. The Sept 11 terrorist attacks occur during this period, and as a result, men and women in uniform are being deployed overseas. There’s uncertainty and chaos, especially for the military families. They are under increasing stress; the kind of stress that exacerbates the problems that affect some of their already strained relationships. Biank is, herself, the daughter of a career Army officer, and the wife of an officer as well. She was already covering the military beat for the Fayetteville Observer when these events unfolded. Her background gave her insight into the military, as well as access. She personally knew some of the soldiers and their families. She treats the women with respect, and yet casts a brutally honest eye on their stories, revealing strengths and flaws equally.
    • 3/5
      The author, a journalist by trade, explains in the prologue that she wrote this book after one summer saw five murders associated with Fort Bragg soldiers and marital discord. She then proceeds to present the lives of four army wives over the period of about a year, providing the reader with some interesting insights into army life that are not necessarily representative, despite the author’s claims that they are. The author asserts in the beginning that the lives of these four women are indicative of the lives of all army wives, but I think she is naive if she actually believes that. Albeit she attempts to get a good cross section by choosing women in various stages of their marriages with husbands in different ranks, but when one considers the many different personalities and unique situations in the world, it's not conceivable to think the experiences of these four women mimic those of thousands of other women married to men in the army (not to mention that women who are wives and in the army themselves are not addressed at all). The book should be viewed for what it is -- the stories of four individual women, which, in being told, shed some light on army life, particularly in terms of the effects it has on the family. That being said, I could not rate this book higher because I had some serious issues with the writing style. For instance, the author seems to flop between wanting to tell the women’s stories in a novelistic fashion and writing a book about her encounters with the army in a more journalistic manner. I personally found it annoying and unnecessary for the author to keep interjecting herself (personal pronouns and all) into the story. In addition, the author seems unsure whether she wants to write about these four army wives or about the ones that were murdered and consequently keeps going back to the murder cases (and basically repeats the same information over and over again). Speaking of repetition, the narrative is sometimes jumpy in its chronology and thereby repeats itself. The author also spends a lot of time writing about what the four army wives were thinking or feeling at a particular moment, as if she were literally in their shoes. At first I assumed she must have thoroughly interviewed all of the women to get this kind of information. However, later in the book it began glaringly obvious that she did not interview at least one of the women, so that made me suspicious about how she gleaned the other information used in the book (particularly those very intimate details). There were two additional minor annoyances with the writing style: 1) The author feels the need to refer to every black person in the book as “a black soldier” or a “black woman,” as if their most important feature is their skin color. She doesn’t feel the need to identify any other character by their race (as presumably they must be white or she would mention their skin color in their first description like with the African-American characters). I found this latent racism to be particularly irksome. 2) The author also feels the need to constantly describe (often in great detail) what the army wives are wearing at any given moment. It got excessive hearing about every item of clothing the women are wearing in each new scene and certainly didn't add anything to the narrative. Personally, I found the ending of the book a bit abrupt, although the epilogue with it’s “where are they now” explanations gave good closure. And finally, the narrator on the audio book was just not interesting or appealing in any way. Overall, it was an okay book but not one I would recommend because of its many flaws.
    • 1/5
      The lives in this book are so far beyond my own life that I couldn't deal with it. If it were fiction I could have gotten into it, perhaps. The fact that it was nonfiction was just damn depressing.