Alaska is home to more than 10,000 active-duty soldiers, about 7,500 of whom are currently deployed in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq may be over, but for those families whose loved ones are still gone, life is challenging, especially in the last frontier, an assignment the military considers as demanding as an overseas post. For the women whose husbands serve in the US Army, "deployment" is not just an abstract word heard on the evening news. It's real, it's tough, and it turns their world upside down. Military wives find themselves in a unique sisterhood that only they can understand.