It took Helen Benedict 15 years to follow a set of fictional characters from the Iraq War’s front lines to its long, unfinished aftermath. The final novel in that trilogy arrives at Vroman’s Bookstore on Thursday.
Benedict, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, will discuss and sign “The Soldier’s House” at 7 p.m. on May 28 in conversation with journalist and author Thomas Page McBee. The novel, published in April by Red Hen Press, 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 — an act meant as atonement that the widow finds both humiliating and compromising.
The book completes a trilogy that began with “Sand Queen” in 2011 and continued with “Wolf Season” in 2017. All three novels share characters whose lives were fractured by the war, and together they trace a single question across a decade and a half: whether redemption and forgiveness are possible between people who were once enemies.
Benedict, a British-American writer, is credited with breaking the story of sexual assault against military women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her nonfiction book “The Lonely Soldier” and related reporting inspired the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary “The Invisible War” and a class-action lawsuit against the Pentagon. She has received the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism, the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, and the PEN/Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History. Her previous novel, “The Good Deed,” published in 2024 by Red Hen Press, was a finalist for the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Her conversation partner, McBee, is an author, journalist, and television writer/producer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Vanity Fair. His Lambda Award-winning memoir “Man Alive” was named a best book of 2014 by NPR Books and Publishers Weekly, and his second book, “Amateur,” about learning to box in order to understand masculinity’s connection to violence, was shortlisted for the Baillie-Gifford Prize and the Wellcome Book Prize. McBee was the first transgender man to box in Madison Square Garden. His work architecting the transition story for Elliot Page’s character on “The Umbrella Academy” was nominated for a GLAAD award.
Publishers Weekly praised “The Soldier’s House,” calling it a compelling account of a family displaced by war, according to the publisher’s description of the novel.
The program is free and will be held at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. A purchase of the book is appreciated and supports future events, according to the bookstore. The bookstore, founded in 1894, is the oldest independent bookstore in Southern California and hosts more than 400 free community events a year. For information, call 626-449-5320 or visit vromansbookstore.com. The paperback is available at Vroman’s for $18.95.
Fifteen years ago, Benedict sent a fictional soldier to war. On Thursday in Pasadena, she brings him home.
