Opening
In 1982, seventeen-year-old Jolene Zarkades (then Jolene Larsen) sees her family as a war zone. On a stormy Valentine’s night, her parents’ latest bout of drinking and violence ends in a sudden reconciliation, a reckless drive, and a shattering loss that becomes the blueprint for Jolene’s future.
What Happens
The prologue drops us into Jolene’s childhood home on Valentine’s Day. Years of chaos teach her to stay in her room and listen: the smash of objects, the slur of accusations, her mother’s sobs. Jolene’s father storms out, and Jolene steps into the aftermath, finding her mother, Karen, on the couch amid broken glass and spilled liquor. She cleans, comforts, and calculates her escape—only four months until graduation.
Her father returns. The fight dissolves into a drunken, cinematic embrace that Jolene watches with cold detachment. Their “movie” reunion feels like a performance she has seen too many times, a twisted version of love that leaves her numb. Despite the rain and their condition, they decide to leave together in his logging truck—the only thing he “really cared about.”
Jolene stands on the porch as the red taillights vanish into the wet dark, and she stares down a terrifying future: no money, no plan, and no safe place to fall. An unearthly red flare splits the night. A police car arrives. The officer tells her both parents are dead. Jolene breaks—harder than she expects—discovering that beneath her armor, love and grief still live.
Character Development
Jolene emerges as a survivor shaped by neglect and volatility. She is practical, emotionally guarded, and old before her time, yet the news of her parents’ deaths cracks the façade. Her tears reveal a daughter’s love she has been forced to bury.
- Assumes the adult role at home—cleaning, soothing, planning
- Treats her parents’ romance as spectacle rather than comfort
- Fixates on escape as the only path to safety
- Distrusts passionate reconciliations that mask abuse
- Grieves deeply despite her cultivated detachment, exposing a core vulnerability
Themes & Symbols
The prologue reframes domestic dysfunction as combat, establishing the novel’s central metaphor: the home front as a battlefield. Jolene’s world trains her to navigate noise, danger, and aftermath—skills that later transmute into literal soldiering. Violence at home functions like war trauma, carving habits of vigilance and emotional withdrawal.
Love appears as a destructive entanglement tied to addiction and denial, a fallen version of romance that corrupts intimacy and forgiveness. The moment Jolene weeps in the doorway introduces Grief and Loss as a defining current—grief that is complicated, layered with anger, relief, and longing. The chapter also sketches the contours of Marriage, Love, and Forgiveness, asking whether love can redeem what it also destroys.
Symbols:
- The battlefield metaphor: translates family life into war, foreshadowing the novel’s moral terrain
- Red: Valentine’s hearts, siren lights, “blood and fire” fuse passion with danger and consequence
- The logging truck: the father’s prized possession and the vehicle of doom, embodying mislaid priorities that culminate in tragedy
Key Quotes
“The way she saw it, some families were like well-tended parks... Others—and this she knew firsthand—were battlefields, bloody and dark, littered with shrapnel and body parts.”
This metaphor is the novel’s thesis. It collapses the boundary between domestic life and warfare, insisting that the wounds of home can be as devastating as any foreign conflict—and that survivors carry those scars into adulthood.
“I can’t. I love him.”
Karen’s confession distills codependent attachment. Love becomes the rationale for self-harm and denial, showing how intimacy can entrench abuse rather than interrupt it.
“What surprised her was how hard she cried.”
The final line overturns Jolene’s hard shell. Her grief exposes a buried loyalty and tenderness, complicating the image of the detached survivor and setting up a lifelong struggle between strength and need.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
The prologue is Jolene’s origin story, mapping the fault lines that shape every choice she makes. She flees one battlefield for another, seeking order where chaos once ruled.
- Motivation for service: The home’s disorder primes Jolene to pursue structure and purpose in the military
- Psychological blueprint: Her parents’ marriage becomes a negative model that shadows her relationship with Michael Zarkades
- Foreshadowing trauma: The war-at-home metaphor anticipates later struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), suggesting Jolene is already wounded before deployment
By the end of the prologue, Jolene stands alone with grief, resolve, and a soldier’s instincts—trained by the home front to survive whatever comes next.