Behind the Blue-Star Banner: A Memoir from the Home Front

Michelle Cuthrell was 23 years old, nine months out of college and 11 weeks pregnant with her first child when her husband deployed to Iraq in August 2005. With a baby in her belly and a husband in her heart, this newlywed embarked on a crazy journey that led her through a year of tests and trials, heartbreak and hard times, as she lived alone in the freezes and frosts of Fairbanks, Alaska. There, Michelle endured the pregnancy and rearing of the couple's first and only child as her husband, Matt, served with the 172nd Stryker brigade in Mosul, Iraq. But when the Department of Defense extended Matt's unit for four additional months in country, just 10 days shy of his much-anticipated homecoming after a year at war, Michelle temporarily fell apart. It was in those difficult days that she learned the real value of friendship, faith and unfailing love.