Anna Cyr is the wife of a member of the Maine National Guard who is deployed to Iraq with the 133rd Engineer Battalion. She lives in Lewiston, Maine, with her sister-in-law, who is married to Anna's husband's brother, who is also in Iraq with the 133rd. They create a new household where they support each other financially, emotionally, and with the practical everyday things, until their husbands return home.

This piece was developed from an expanded written documentary I undertook as a writing student at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. After my semester as a writing student there I used the taped interviews with Anna Cyr I had collected and, after learning radio production from Rob Rosenthal at the Salt Institute, turned them into this radio piece. The initial version of 'Anna on the Homefront' I produced is 9:19, the second, somewhat hastily cut, version is 6:36, which is the version that aired on Big Talk, on WMPG, Portland's community radio station. Hide full description