Helen Benedict’s The Soldier’s House, recommended by Issue 29 contributor Terese Svoboda
In The Soldier’s House, Jimmy Donnell, a dazed PTSD-suffering vet, takes in the family of his dead Iraqi translator, including Tariq, the translator’s child, who is legless as a result of the war. Donnell does his best to welcome them to the US despite their anger and unresolved grief over the translator’s death, the child’s disability, and their subsequent displacement. Is forgiveness possible? “I knew… like all refugees, I would be plagued by loss, homesickness, and sorrow,” says Tariq’s mother.