There is, in America, a subculture we never talk about: the military community in peacetime, where the Brass God imposes an ancient code of honor; where the officer-as-a-gentleman returns to his lady-the most invisible woman in America, his waiting wife; and where the bedroom replaces the battlefield.

When Lieutenant Colonel Guy Garrett retires in Alaska, he carries the scars of Vietnam with him, into the era of post-Tailhook sex scandals and the rise of women into coveted military positions-one of them his own daughter. But it is his unpredictable wife Julie who wrenches his soul. Meanwhile, at her friend Mona's request, Julie Garrett sets out to retrieve hidden notebooks from their old military stairwell in Germany, sparking drama when she finds her old lover is now her daughter's commander.

Ode to a Brass God interweaves the intimate lives of the Garretts from two very different generations with five other families who once shared a communal life in Germany-and it asks the question, When the home front replaces the war front, where does a peacetime army find its enemies?