What do you think?
Rate this book
Lizzie's War
A family epic laced with authenticity, wit and unforgettable characters. Liz O'Reilly has a husband in Vietnam, 4 kids under the age of 12 (and one on the way), and a burgeoning crush on the family priest. An unconventional love story.
It's Summer 1967 and Mike O'Reilly's just shipped out to Vietnam. Liz O'Reilly is trying to keep it all together for their four kids – 6 year old Deb–Deb (who believes she is an otter), 8 year old Angus, Kathie, (who at age 9 helps to integrate the local Blue Bird troop with her best friend Temperance), and 11 year old Danny – the spitting image of Mike. While Mike is off fighting "his" war, Liz struggles with her own desires and yearnings – to pick up the theatre career she abandoned when Danny was born, to care for the four children she loves fiercely yet also occasionally resents, to leave the backdoor unlocked so she always has an escape route.
While set during the conflict in Vietnam, Farrington's novel captures the other side of any war – that of the war at home and the careening emotions of the spouses and families left behind.
It's Summer 1967 and Mike O'Reilly's just shipped out to Vietnam. Liz O'Reilly is trying to keep it all together for their four kids – 6 year old Deb–Deb (who believes she is an otter), 8 year old Angus, Kathie, (who at age 9 helps to integrate the local Blue Bird troop with her best friend Temperance), and 11 year old Danny – the spitting image of Mike. While Mike is off fighting "his" war, Liz struggles with her own desires and yearnings – to pick up the theatre career she abandoned when Danny was born, to care for the four children she loves fiercely yet also occasionally resents, to leave the backdoor unlocked so she always has an escape route.
While set during the conflict in Vietnam, Farrington's novel captures the other side of any war – that of the war at home and the careening emotions of the spouses and families left behind.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
71 people are currently reading
528 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
February 6, 2012
Tim Farrington’s 2005 novel, Lizzie’s War, opens with a helluva first line: “Detroit was burning.” I was immediately pulled in to this story of two wars. Taking place between July 1967 and Labor Day 1968, the novel is reflective of the period. At home, riots are burning the country and in Vietnam, men are dying at an alarming rate in an unpopular war in an unforgiving country.
Captain Michael O’Reilly, USMC, has shipped out for Da Nang. His wife, Liz, is on her way to her parents with their four kids in tow. Danny is ten, Kathie is eight, Angus is seven, and Deb-Deb is five. Reluctantly, child number five is on the way, much to Liz’s chagrin. She had hopes to go back into the theatre, but that dream seems impossible. Still, like a good Catholic wife and mother, Liz plans to learn to love the child she is carrying.
Farrington weaves a tale that resembles cramming together Jan Struther’s Mrs. Miniver (yes, it was a book before it was a movie) and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. It alternates betweens Mike’s war stories and Liz’s efforts on the homefront. Besides their love for each other and the kids, Liz and Mike are joined in their grief over the death of a friend on the Vietnam battlefield. Liz does her best to comfort her newly-widowed friend, while Mike does all he can not to wind up like Larry.
This is not a neat and tidy story. Mike is severely wounded while a third trimester miscarriage almost kills Liz. Still it is a story of sacrifice and endurance. Simply un-put-downable.
Captain Michael O’Reilly, USMC, has shipped out for Da Nang. His wife, Liz, is on her way to her parents with their four kids in tow. Danny is ten, Kathie is eight, Angus is seven, and Deb-Deb is five. Reluctantly, child number five is on the way, much to Liz’s chagrin. She had hopes to go back into the theatre, but that dream seems impossible. Still, like a good Catholic wife and mother, Liz plans to learn to love the child she is carrying.
Farrington weaves a tale that resembles cramming together Jan Struther’s Mrs. Miniver (yes, it was a book before it was a movie) and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. It alternates betweens Mike’s war stories and Liz’s efforts on the homefront. Besides their love for each other and the kids, Liz and Mike are joined in their grief over the death of a friend on the Vietnam battlefield. Liz does her best to comfort her newly-widowed friend, while Mike does all he can not to wind up like Larry.
This is not a neat and tidy story. Mike is severely wounded while a third trimester miscarriage almost kills Liz. Still it is a story of sacrifice and endurance. Simply un-put-downable.
January 30, 2017
This lovely book is all about war. The most literal battles in it are waged by a seasoned officer in various harrowing scenarios in Vietnam, but there are also the spiritual battles of a Catholic priest with his calling, his own war history, and his attraction to a lonely parishioner. Most centrally, though, it's about the battle of tough-minded Lizzie to keep herself, her children, and other families around her from falling apart while their husbands are deployed, and sometimes even after they return. Woven through all this, the battle for civil rights also provides the threat of explosions closer to home.
So there's a lot going on, and that's not even touching on the extent to which this book is a love song to Marine families. Farrington might be at his most touching when writing about children whose fathers are overseas. As the priest remarks in hilarious deadpan during one of the kids' potato gun offensives, "War is hell," but these characters -- even the kids -- often discover their own moral bottom lines in the course of battle.
There's a lot to chew on here, much of it defying stereotype. Tim Farrington is also one of my favorite prose stylists ever (and, fair disclosure, has become a friend). Despite the gritty subject matter (especially compared to THE MONK DOWNSTAIRS, which I adore), I found this book a real pleasure to read.
So there's a lot going on, and that's not even touching on the extent to which this book is a love song to Marine families. Farrington might be at his most touching when writing about children whose fathers are overseas. As the priest remarks in hilarious deadpan during one of the kids' potato gun offensives, "War is hell," but these characters -- even the kids -- often discover their own moral bottom lines in the course of battle.
There's a lot to chew on here, much of it defying stereotype. Tim Farrington is also one of my favorite prose stylists ever (and, fair disclosure, has become a friend). Despite the gritty subject matter (especially compared to THE MONK DOWNSTAIRS, which I adore), I found this book a real pleasure to read.
Read
May 11, 2017Refreshingly honest and shockingly perceptive as to the insights of some of the emotions that surround a deployment. It crosses the generational gap fom Vietnam to present as it shows the challenges that military spouse's face.
-- Tiffany M.
-- Tiffany M.
October 5, 2018
I had mixed feelings about this book. It's about a Marine Wife living at home, raising 4 children while her husband is fighting in the Viet Nam war. It was a "slow go" for me getting started but once "into it" i found most of the content very interesting. The wife's emotions, being alone and handling her kids and life without the support of her husband was good. The husband's life fighting in war was equally as good. I couldn't figure out why the Priest was included in this, I felt that his role in the book was boring. The kids playing war games was too detailed and I felt that was boring too. I would have liked to have seen more of how the wife and husband re-connected once he returned rather than devoting so much time to the kids games and the Priest. 3 1/2 stars
February 27, 2015
This book is what real feels like. The emotions and thinking of the characters is what one would expect considering the issues addressed in this book. The only thing that seemed amiss was one of the characters stories just ended without a full explanation. Other than that the book was one of the better ones I have read in quite a while.
March 31, 2015
I loved it! Not only did the Vietnam war cause anguish, uncertainty and death, those at home had the same feelings and outcomes with marriage, family, loneliness. A great read not only for that generation of people but for all voracious readers.
June 7, 2017
A great representation of this era (when my parents were teenagers!), a tribute to military families, and a reminder of the horror, wastefulness, and randomness of war. In the end it's really a beautiful love story and a story about families (and extended families). Loved it!
April 6, 2021
This novel spans a year and a half in 1967-68 in the lives of Liz O’Reilly, her husband, USMC officer Mike, and their four children. He’s in Vietnam, they’re in Virginia Beach. The story moves smoothly between them, in letters and narrative, so that we see what each is up against. He is transferred from one base to another, ending up at Khe Sanh near the North Vietnam and Laos borders, ordered to take and hold a hilltop with his company. Which they do, many dying in the effort as twenty thousand Viet Cong shell and rush the hill.
"It was odd to be in such an empty chopper. The light Huey gunship normally carried a squad, seven combat troops – or, depending on whether you were coming or going, three casualty litters, two sitting wounded, and a corpsman. Most of the time, if you got to ride in a helicopter with so much free space, you were dead."
Meanwhile, Liz visits with other Marine wives, each dreading the day when a telltale green sedan carrying two full-dress officers parks in front of the house. She and her older daughter and her Black friend integrate the Bluebird troop while her sons enact battles they’ve seen on the news. Oldest son Danny, an altar boy in the Catholic church, becomes close to the younger priest, Father Germaine, formerly a chaplain in Vietnam, with shrapnel in his leg and a drinking problem to prove it. While Liz grapples with her faith and tries for her children’s sake to keep functioning, Mike is deep in the fight of his life.
"The children didn’t know it yet, but there was a fifth passenger. Liz was 6 weeks pregnant. It had been a catastrophe of sorts, a classic Catholic mistake. The last thing she wanted. But there it was. She could feel the new life inside her as a hotter place, a burning spot, as if she had swallowed a live coal. And as a weight, tilting some inner scale toward helpless rage. It wasn’t something she wanted to feel. She had more than enough guilt and ambivalence with the children already born."
Farrington is a fine writer, and events impel us onward – will Mike survive? Will their marriage? Do they lie to protect each other, or because the truth is unutterable or altogether unknowable? He reaches down into their hearts and shows us the wounds and hopes coexisting there. The military procedures and soldiers at war are sharply detailed – if you know nothing about Vietnam, you will learn the essentials here. Likewise, if you – like me – know little about Catholicism, you’ll find out enough to understand both its constraints and the faith that underpins them.
"It was odd to be in such an empty chopper. The light Huey gunship normally carried a squad, seven combat troops – or, depending on whether you were coming or going, three casualty litters, two sitting wounded, and a corpsman. Most of the time, if you got to ride in a helicopter with so much free space, you were dead."
Meanwhile, Liz visits with other Marine wives, each dreading the day when a telltale green sedan carrying two full-dress officers parks in front of the house. She and her older daughter and her Black friend integrate the Bluebird troop while her sons enact battles they’ve seen on the news. Oldest son Danny, an altar boy in the Catholic church, becomes close to the younger priest, Father Germaine, formerly a chaplain in Vietnam, with shrapnel in his leg and a drinking problem to prove it. While Liz grapples with her faith and tries for her children’s sake to keep functioning, Mike is deep in the fight of his life.
"The children didn’t know it yet, but there was a fifth passenger. Liz was 6 weeks pregnant. It had been a catastrophe of sorts, a classic Catholic mistake. The last thing she wanted. But there it was. She could feel the new life inside her as a hotter place, a burning spot, as if she had swallowed a live coal. And as a weight, tilting some inner scale toward helpless rage. It wasn’t something she wanted to feel. She had more than enough guilt and ambivalence with the children already born."
Farrington is a fine writer, and events impel us onward – will Mike survive? Will their marriage? Do they lie to protect each other, or because the truth is unutterable or altogether unknowable? He reaches down into their hearts and shows us the wounds and hopes coexisting there. The military procedures and soldiers at war are sharply detailed – if you know nothing about Vietnam, you will learn the essentials here. Likewise, if you – like me – know little about Catholicism, you’ll find out enough to understand both its constraints and the faith that underpins them.
July 13, 2017
I have mixed feelings towards this book. While it was well written I remember the Vietnam era and the war and protests everywhere.
Mike O'Reilly, a captain in the marines is deployed to Khe Sahn in Vietnam in 1967 while his wife Lizzie is left at home with four young children to deal with. Lizzie's story shows the fear, loneliness and anger that she has to confront. Mike's story tells us of the tedium as well as horror of that war and probably all wars. Mike believes in the objective of the war. He believes in his duty to serve. Therefore even when he's seriously wounded he refuses to go home and he reruns to the battlefield.
Remembering that time well, I had a hard time understanding Mike's devotion to the war effort. Everyone I knew was opposed to the war. This book barely scrapes the surface of the anti-war movement. I wish there was more of it in the book. It would have made for a more interesting read.
Mike O'Reilly, a captain in the marines is deployed to Khe Sahn in Vietnam in 1967 while his wife Lizzie is left at home with four young children to deal with. Lizzie's story shows the fear, loneliness and anger that she has to confront. Mike's story tells us of the tedium as well as horror of that war and probably all wars. Mike believes in the objective of the war. He believes in his duty to serve. Therefore even when he's seriously wounded he refuses to go home and he reruns to the battlefield.
Remembering that time well, I had a hard time understanding Mike's devotion to the war effort. Everyone I knew was opposed to the war. This book barely scrapes the surface of the anti-war movement. I wish there was more of it in the book. It would have made for a more interesting read.
May 25, 2019
Military wife Liz O'Reilly is left to hold down the fort while her husband Mike is shipped out to Vietnam. Mike a marine is a a seasoned soldier and strong in his mind and body. Liz meanwhile has found out she is pregnant with their fifth child and is at home with four other children under the age of 12. Life is tough but military wives carry on and then Liz finds out her best friends husband has been killed in Vietnam. Liz fears for her husband who has a command of undisciplined marines but he takes it all in his stride until he is injured. Life must go on and Liz has burdens to bear including delivering a baby who lives a very short while.
October 15, 2018
A Motherly Perspective
Rarely is a book written regarding the upheaval of life of a soldier's wife. Maintaining a household was not the norm for women during the Vietnam era, even though women were beginning to break the rules. The dreaded double Marine knock on the door, delivering the unspeakable. The conceptual religion bringing no peace. The book gives the reader a year in the life of Lizzie during the 60s, a tumultuous time in and of itself.
Rarely is a book written regarding the upheaval of life of a soldier's wife. Maintaining a household was not the norm for women during the Vietnam era, even though women were beginning to break the rules. The dreaded double Marine knock on the door, delivering the unspeakable. The conceptual religion bringing no peace. The book gives the reader a year in the life of Lizzie during the 60s, a tumultuous time in and of itself.
June 12, 2019
This was a beautifully written book. The images were poetic and so very real. Vietnam was my generation's war. It is the war I frame all other wars with. It is the one that my "brothers" friends and contemporaries went to. The one my husband fought in. (I lived through Vietnam flashbacks in the middle of the night for years.)
This provided some insight into the experience of a serviceman "in country" and the family he left behind.
I'm so glad it was recommended by my book club.
This provided some insight into the experience of a serviceman "in country" and the family he left behind.
I'm so glad it was recommended by my book club.
July 3, 2017
Quite possibly the best novel I have read this year! Set during the Vietnam War, the sentiments on war, military life, marriage, motherhood, religion, and racism, so beautifully expressed by Farrington, are still pertinent today. By turns humorous and heart-wrenching, Lizzie's War truly touched me in a way that few novels do.
May 2, 2018
This book began with a somewhat shallow or flip tone about Vietnam War and the family whose lives were affected by it. Not until an injury mid way through, does the author bring a more realistic tone. Again as in many current books, we see the switching of point of view from several characters. It is mostly through the eyes of a mother whose husband is fighting in the war.
July 13, 2021
This was an amazing, beautiful book. I know that in reality that so many coming home from Vietnam were never okay and Mike certainly suffered as bad as any but I don't care. I loved it. I certainly would never want to disregard the horrors so many returned to and with, but this was a book about family and love, not so much that war, but as the title says Lizzie's (on the homefront) War.
January 28, 2018
I borrowed this book on a cruise ship....it was a spectacular read...I absolutely loved the characters-the strength of this woman who is trying to hold her families life together while her husband is off fighting in Vietnam. Just let Vedic...Brought me to tears....
March 24, 2018
Such an interesting story about those fighting in Vietnam and those left behind to carry on in their absence. Liz is left to take care of her four children while her husband is off fighting the war. This story portrays the struggles of war not only in the trenches but on the home front.
February 1, 2021
I found this story riveting the way the author described not only the soldier’s war experience but also those of the family left behind. What a toll it takes on everyone. The strength and complexities of relationships.
October 24, 2025
When I began the book, I had a sense of "Ugh, this is going to be an ordeal to get through." I'm happy to say I was wrong. I got really into the story, and the writing was good.
I don't know much about the military, but Mike's letters seemed to be way too full of information.
I don't know much about the military, but Mike's letters seemed to be way too full of information.
September 27, 2017
Awesome book about the war told from both the soldier's perspective and his wife's perspective, has great human emotions. One of my 10 best books ever written.
March 2, 2018
I really enjoyed this book, nice insight into experience of a military family, good pace.
September 10, 2018
It was so interesting to see how Liz and Mike experienced the Vietnam War, her as a wife at home, and him as a soldier. I also noted how the children reacted to it.
September 29, 2018
Wow
I really enjoyed this book, it was full of everything from frustration to love, loss and everything in between, it has a little bit of everything.
I really enjoyed this book, it was full of everything from frustration to love, loss and everything in between, it has a little bit of everything.
December 7, 2018
Poignant and humorous at the same time.
January 15, 2019
The spouse and surviving at home.
February 20, 2019
Devastatingly beautiful. I'd like to read some other books by this author.
February 20, 2020
Of course it's fiction, but it's the transcendent human condition with a family, a church, a nation at war in Vietnam, birth & death & conflicts & sorrow & joy & redemption. Love this author!
March 31, 2021
A harder read because half the book takes place in Vietnam during the Vietnam war, but Farrington's lovely voice comes through. He's my favorite author.
Read
October 31, 2022Book club
January 22, 2024
Excellent book! "They also serve who only stand and wait." Realism in fighting the war in Vietnam, and those who cope at home. Brings back memories.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews