Helen Benedict wrote about the Iraq War as a journalist first — the sexual assaults, the displacement, the veterans who came home different. Then she turned the same material into novels. Three of them, over 15 years.
The last arrives at Vroman’s Bookstore on May 28, when Benedict discusses and signs The Soldier’s House in conversation with author and journalist Thomas Page McBee. The event begins at 7:00 p.m. at the store’s Colorado Boulevard location.
Published in April by Red Hen Press, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit publisher, the novel tells the story of an American veteran who brings his slain Iraqi interpreter’s widow, child, and mother to his home in upstate New York. The soldier sees it as amends. The widow sees it as something more complicated — rescue by the same country that destroyed hers.
The book completes a trilogy Benedict began in 2011 with Sand Queen, described as the first American literary novel about a female soldier in Iraq, and continued in 2017 with Wolf Season. The three novels share characters and trace the war’s consequences across years, continents, and the interior lives of people on both sides of the conflict.
Benedict is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the author of nine novels and six nonfiction books. Her reporting on sexual assault in the military inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon and the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary The Invisible War, according to her Columbia faculty biography. She is a recipient of the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History, the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.
Publishers Weekly praised the novel, writing that it effectively portrays the struggles of a war-displaced family. Booklist called it a rich portrait of lives reshaped by conflict.
Her conversation partner, McBee, brings a different but intersecting set of interests. His Lambda Award-winning memoir Man Alive examined identity and violence; his follow-up, Amateur, chronicled his experience as the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden and was shortlisted for the Baillie-Gifford Prize. McBee’s essays and reportage have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair. He is also a television writer and producer whose work on The Umbrella Academy was nominated for a GLAAD award, according to his publisher, Simon & Schuster.
The Vroman’s event listing does not state an admission fee; the store notes that a purchase of the book is appreciated and supports future events. More information is available at vromansbookstore.com. Vroman’s, founded in 1894, is the oldest independent bookstore in Southern California. The store is located at 695 East Colorado Boulevard and can be reached at (626) 449-5320. Store hours are 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10:00 a.m. to 7 :00p.m. Sunday.
A veteran who opened his door. A widow who didn’t ask to walk through it. That’s the story Benedict has been working toward for 15 years — and the one she’ll bring to Pasadena on May 28.
