Helen Benedict — The Soldier's House - with Mary Kay Zuravleff

In The Soldier’s House, Helen Benedict tells the story of an Iraq War veteran who saves the lives of his assassinated Iraqi interpreter’s widow and child by bringing them to his home in upstate New York. For the soldier, this is a way of making amends for his interpreter’s death. But the widow finds being rescued by the enemy both humiliating and compromising. This is a compassionate tale that examines whether redemption and forgiveness are even possible in the wake of war. Like Benedict’s related novels, Wolf Season and Sand Queen, both of which feature some of the same characters that appear in The Soldier’s House, this book breaks new ground. In the light of the current wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and the worldwide controversies over refugees, The Soldier’s House is particular timely and poignant.Helen Benedict has been writing about refugees and war for many years, both in her three most recent novels, The Good Deed, Wolf Season and Sand Queen, and in her 2022 book of nonfiction, Map of Hope & Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece. 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, Benedict is also the author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq. Her writings inspired a class action suit against the Pentagon on behalf of those sexually assaulted in the military and the 2012 Oscar nominated documentary The Invisible War. She is a professor at Columbia University in New York.Benedict is in conversation Mary Kay Zuravleff, the award-winning author of American Ending, inspired by both her grandmothers and her coal-mining grandfathers. Her third novel, Man Alive!, a Washington Post Notable Book, was praised by People magazine for its "impressive intelligence and sly humor," and the New York Times called her second, The Bowl Is Already Broken, "a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world's bickering and scheming." She is the recipient of the American Academy of Art's Rosenthal Award, the James Jones First Novel Award, and multiple Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts.She has taught writing at American University, the Chautauqua Institution, Johns Hopkins and George Mason Universities, and she has written and edited extensively for the Smithsonian. Her essays and short stories have appeared in such venues as The Daily Beast, American Short Fiction, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, This Is What America Looks Like, and Why I Like This Story. She was born in Syracuse, New York, raised in Oklahoma City, educated in Houston and Baltimore, and has made Washington, DC, her home.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781636282787?ic_referral=8EfHcezIKZCL1a85jE-2GxewMsd0ddVmaOQUX0W12McwM0TpjeLjwYtaaAMU-YUQNl6fVTVU2gfBA6GWHbq7xvy7vuUrU3fiYRDdyEs4pO_sOdlf_xP4IsNXHPf01NEEWC-PA2I