Betty Pack, a Texas writer, has been a high school English teacher, and sometime French teacher, for 20 years, an adjunct English teacher for two years at the Alamo Community College District-and she is a graduate school dropout in (Catholic) theology, after two years of evening classes (2005-2007) because they finally told her that her writing would never be academic enough and that, as a theologian, the only jobs available to her would be teaching or writing. Betty was, at that time, sick of teaching and had already been a fairly successful "secular" writer at a substantial salary, a prize-winning columnist-once being granted an award, a favorite of hers, for humor, of all things, a gift to remember on dark days. This award business was at the once Hearst-owned (now defunct) San Antonio Light newspaper. At the Light, she wrote three to four columns a week about anything or everything except city hall for seven years. During her time at the Light, she won, among other awards, the Texas State Headliner award, later rescinded because of questions about the originality of one of the three columns the company entered for her in the competition. Despite other prizes over the years, and awards, some just for being a (top) woman in journalism, she was laid off in a "staff reduction move" about a year prior to Hearst closing the Light and buying the city's competing newspaper.

Military novels tend to focus more closely on the soldier's experience than those of the family and friends left at home. In this contemplative book, Pack sheds light on those often-forgotten stories, writing about several people who are parents and relatives of young men at war. Set in a Texas-Mexico border town at the beginning of the Gulf War, book will hit home for any military family member.