Helen Benedict’s THE SOLDIER’S HOUSE (2026) completes her Iraq war trilogy, that began with SAND QUEEN (2011) and was followed by WOLF SEASON (2017). But the new book is actually the middle tome of the trilogy, and tells the story of Iraqi refugees, Naema (a pediatrician), her six year-old son Tariq, an amputee who lost a leg at age three in a car bombing that killed his grandfather and his father, Khalil, also a doctor, who had been working as an interpreter for US Army Staff Sergeant Jimmy Donnell at a prison camp in southern Iraq, where Naema’s father and brother had both died. (I know, a too long run-on, but I’m just trying to get it all in there.) Oh, and Naema’s bitter and bereaved mother-in-law, Hibah, is with them too, all three evacuated from Iraq through the efforts of SSG Donnell, who brings them to his rundown rural home in upstate New York, that “soldier’s house” of the title. The process took years, reams of paperwork, and an extended stay under dire conditions in Damascus, before the three were finally approved to emigrate and were flown to NYC and then to Albany, where Donnell met them and took them to his home where he has fashioned a semi-private living space for them in a large back room.