Jolene Zarkades

Quick Facts

• Role: Protagonist; Black Hawk pilot, Chief Warrant Officer, Army National Guard
• First appearance: Prologue (childhood backstory establishes her core wounds)
• Age: Early forties at the start
• Key relationships: Husband Michael; daughters Betsy and Lulu; best friend Tami; mother-in-law Mila
• Defining conflict: Balancing soldier and mother; rebuilding identity after combat injury and trauma

Who She Is

Jolene Zarkades is a disciplined, mission-first soldier and a fiercely devoted mother whose life splits down the middle when she deploys to Iraq. The Guard gave her the structure and “family” her abusive childhood didn’t, but the very traits that make her an exceptional pilot harden into emotional armor at home. As her marriage to Michael Zarkades frays and her bond with her preteen Betsy Zarkades sours, Jolene insists on duty—then pays for it twice: once in the desert, and again in her living room. Her injury forces her to rebuild from the ground up, redefining strength, motherhood, and love.

Appearance

Hannah frames Jolene’s looks as an extension of her character: tall, strong, and practical—“ash-gold” hair pulled back, a face sharpened by resolve. After the crash, the scar on her face and the amputation above the knee become living symbols of survival. They are not just wounds but narrative signposts: the body keeps the story, even when Jolene refuses to speak it.

Her face—like everything about her—was strong and angular... Most women her age wore makeup and colored their hair, but Jolene didn’t have time for any of that.

Personality & Traits

Beneath the soldier’s precision lies a girl who learned early that control equals safety. Jolene channels pain into discipline and optimism, but the novel exposes the limits of that strategy: control can steady a helicopter; it cannot hold a marriage together or quiet a nighttime memory.

• Resilient, strong-willed: She decides happiness is an act of will, not a feeling. Michael calls her “Teflon strong,” a compliment that later reveals a cost: nothing sticks, including vulnerability.
• Dutiful and loyal: Honor binds her to her unit and to home; she deploys because she believes duty is love in action—even as she knows her choice will hurt those she loves.
• Nurturing and maternal: Her driving purpose is to give Betsy and Lulu Zarkades the stability she never had, tying her to the theme of Motherhood and Identity. Her tough-love exterior masks a tenderness that surfaces most clearly with Lulu.
• Guarded: She compartmentalizes, avoiding hard conversations, which widens the marital rift. Silence becomes another battlefield tactic—effective in combat, corrosive at home.
• Traumatized: After the crash, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) shatters her “choose happiness” creed. Nightmares, rage, and numbness invert her strengths, isolating her when she most needs connection.

Character Journey

Jolene begins as a woman who believes she can organize her life into two clean columns—mother and soldier—and win at both. The Impact of War on Soldiers and Families collapses that separation. The crash strips away her pilot and runner identities; the loss of her leg literalizes the loss of self she can no longer outrun. Homecoming is not an ending but another dangerous mission: rehab, grief for Tami Flynn, and a marriage in triage. The arc turns when Jolene risks the one thing she’s avoided since childhood—dependence. Accepting help from Michael and the girls doesn’t make her weaker; it redefines strength as honesty, interdependence, and the courage to be seen. She moves from a woman who manufactures positivity to one who slowly, painfully earns hope.

Key Relationships

• Michael Zarkades: The marriage charts the novel’s exploration of Marriage, Love, and Forgiveness. Michael’s pre-deployment “I don’t love you anymore” detonates the trust Jolene uses as armor; her stoicism, in turn, keeps him outside the blast radius of her pain. Their reconciliation grows not from grand gestures but from a new fluency in truth—his public recognition of her service and her willingness to let him carry part of her weight.
• Betsy and Lulu: Betsy’s adolescent shame about her mother’s uniform magnifies Jolene’s deepest fear—that duty makes her a bad mom. Lulu’s easier affection offers refuge but also reminds Jolene what she risks losing. Rebuilding these bonds asks Jolene to mother differently: less invincible, more present—and to accept her daughters’ grief alongside her own.
• Tami Flynn: Best friend, fellow pilot, chosen family. Tami is the one person who sees through Jolene’s steel. Her death compounds Jolene’s survivor’s guilt and anchors the novel’s meditation on Grief and Loss, pushing Jolene to confront pain rather than out-fly it.
• Mila Zarkades: A steady maternal presence Jolene never had growing up. Mila’s unconditional care reframes “strength” as something shared, not hoarded—an idea Jolene must accept to heal.

Defining Moments

Jolene’s story turns on scenes where her identities collide—and where she chooses vulnerability over control.

• The Prologue: Her parents’ violent, love-starved marriage and deaths seed Jolene’s lifelong equation: control = safety. Why it matters: It explains both her soldierly competence and her emotional distance.
• The Fight with Michael: On the eve of deployment, he says he doesn’t love her. Why it matters: It isolates Jolene before war begins, ensuring she carries both combat risk and marital abandonment into Iraq.
• The Helicopter Crash: Her Black Hawk goes down; she’s gravely injured, her leg later amputated; her door gunner Keith Keller is killed (some editions name the fallen gunner Owen “Smitty” Smith), and Tami is mortally wounded. Why it matters: The crash is both physical catastrophe and identity rupture—the end of “pilot-first” Jolene.
• The Bathroom Breakdown: Post-homecoming, she collapses and finally lets Michael hold her. Why it matters: It’s the first time she lets anyone witness her pain, the hinge of their reconciliation.
• The Courthouse: At Keith’s trial, Michael publicly honors her service. Why it matters: Jolene receives, at last, the validation she withheld from herself; love and respect re-enter the marriage in the language she understands—duty acknowledged.

Symbolism & Motifs

Jolene embodies the modern female warrior, torn between country and home. Learning to walk on a prosthesis mirrors the emotional work of rebalancing: new gait, new pace, new center of gravity. The scar and missing limb resist invisibility; they insist on a truth Jolene can’t compartmentalize—healing is not a return to “before” but the making of a different self who can still love and be loved.

Essential Quotes

Happiness was a choice she knew how to make. She chose not to think about the things that bothered her; that way, they disappeared.

This credo powers Jolene through childhood and flight school—but it collapses under trauma. The novel exposes the danger of turning happiness into suppression: what’s “chosen away” resurfaces as PTSD and estrangement.

"I was a soldier first."

A confession and a rebuke, this line crystallizes Jolene’s identity hierarchy. The story will upend it, asking whether “first” can make room for “also”—and whether love requires reprioritizing what once felt nonnegotiable.

"What kind of mother could leave her children?" She drew in a sharp breath. It would have hurt less to be smacked across the face.

This accusation pierces Jolene’s core fear: that duty equals abandonment. The visceral reaction shows how societal judgments amplify her private guilt, making home front battles as bruising as combat.

She looked at her children and it hurt so much she couldn’t breathe... That woman was gone; she’d been shot down and died in the desert.

Jolene names the death of her former self, refusing any easy “back to normal.” The passage validates grief for lost identities and clears space for a rebirth that isn’t denial but acceptance.

"I’m not a warrior anymore, Mila. Or a wife, or a mother. In fact, who the hell am I?"

This is the nadir of identity foreclosure. Spoken to the one person who mothers her, it invites a counterstory: that worth is not contingent on role performance—and that identity can be rebuilt in relationship.

"I’m afraid," she said quietly. "What if I’m like Keith?"

Fear finally voiced replaces bravado with honesty. By naming her terror—of death, of moral injury, of failing her family—Jolene turns toward connection, the first step out of isolation.