Homefront explores the uncomfortable truths of a deployment: jealousy, selfishness, joy, anger, and abject fear. Through the interactions between the book's true-to-life characters (Mia, the professor-turned- cabdriver whose boyfriend deploys to Iraq; Jake, the boyfriend; Olivia, Jake's mother; Denise, a disgruntled soldier's wife and friend to Mia; Donny Donaldson, an alcoholic, maybe-Vietnam veteran and Mia's cab fare), Homefront reveals the unexpected beauty to be found hiding in the torture of waiting as each character responds to the war in his or her own unique, and painfully intimate, way.