In 2003, the United States attacked Iraq, ostensibly to rid the country of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The war destabilized the Middle East and resulted in Hussein’s death as well as the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Helen Benedict’s latest novel, The Soldier’s House, focuses on the Iraq war, the turmoil it caused in the lives of one Iraqi family, and the American soldier who tries to help them.
The Soldier’s House is the final novel in Benedict’s Iraq war trilogy, which includes Sand Queen and Wolf Season. This second novel, the most ambitious of the three, occurs both in Iraq and in the United States; it focuses on both men and women, and tackles the effects of war. Even though a few of the characters appear in all three novels, one does not have to be familiar with the other books to appreciate The Soldier’s House.