For Immediate Release
Publisher of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tinkers by Paul Harding
Media Contact: Molly Mikolowski, (612) 728-1692, [email protected]
Announcing Wolf Season, a novel by Helen Benedict
9-CITY* NATIONAL TOUR | MEET THE AUTHOR
NEW YORK PROVIDENCE Tues., Oct. 10, 2017 @ 7:30pm | Greenlight Thurs., Oct. 26, 2017 @ 7pm | Brown Bookstore with Matt Gallagher University with Maurice Decaul
Sun., Nov. 5, 2017 @ 6pm | Why There Are BOSTON Words reading series at the Bowery Poetry Thurs., Nov. 2, 2017 @ 7pm | Newtonville Club with Owen Lewis, Susan Lewis, Books Meghan O'Rourke, Louise Marburg, and Sarah Van Arsdale ANN ARBOR Tues., Nov. 7, 2017 @ 7pm | Literati Mon., Nov. 13, 2017 @ 7pm | Center for Bookstore Fiction with David Abrams, Cara Hoffman, Matt Gallagher, and Dalia Sofer KANSAS CITY Tues., Nov. 14, 2017 @ 6:30pm | Kansas Sun., Nov. 19, 2017 @ 5pm | BLOOM City Public Library with Whitney Terrell reading series at the Lounge at Hudson
View Gardens with Joanne Sills and SEATTLE William Coakley Tues., Nov. 28, 2017 @ 7pm | Elliott Bay Mon., Nov. 20, 2017 @ 7pm | Book Culture Book Company with Cara Hoffman SAN FRANCISCO WASHINGTON, DC Weds., Nov. 29, 2017 @ 7:30pm | The Sun., Oct. 15, 2017 @ 1pm | Politics and Bindery with Ayelet Waldman Prose PORTLAND, OR Thurs., Jan. 4, 2018 @ 7:30pm | Powell’s Books
*more cities & events TBA The war comes home in a searingly compassionate story about the wounds inflicted on soldiers, refugees, and their families
“[Helen Benedict] has emerged as one of our most thoughtful and provocative writers of war literature.” —DAVID ABRAMS, author of Fobbit and Brave Deeds, at the Quivering Pen
After a hurricane devastates a small town in upstate New York, the lives of three women and their young children are irrevocably changed. Rin, an Iraq War veteran, tries to protect her blind daughter and the three wolves under her care. Naema, a widowed doctor who fled Iraq with her wounded son, faces life-threatening injuries and confusion about her feelings for Louis, a veteran and widower harboring his own secrets and guilt. Beth, who is raising a troubled son, waits out her marine husband’s deployment in Afghanistan, equally afraid of him coming home and of him never returning at all. As they struggle to maintain their humanity and find hope, their war-torn lives collide in a way that will affect their entire community.
Praise for Wolf Season
“Wolf Season is honest about suffering, trauma, and the difficulty of healing after war. . . . [The novel] reminds us that we do what’s best for our family—our pack—even if it’s the thing that hurts the most.” —Chronogram
“The novel moves between striking passages that speak war’s truth and heartfelt stories about how women—and mothers—experience war and its aftermath. While there are male soldiers in Wolf Season, women’s experience is at the forefront. . . . Told with honesty and empathy, Wolf Season is a contemporary tale about how the war always comes home.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“Unflinching. . . . In a book that deserves the widest attention, Benedict ‘follows the war home,’ engaging readers with an insightful story right up until the gut-wrenching conclusion.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“Affecting. . . . The ‘very long reach of war’ transcends generations.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Gripping. . . . A low level of dread builds slowly, drawing readers toward the inevitable climactic clash, though Benedict’s memorable and complicated characterization is the true highlight.” —Publishers Weekly
“Compelling. . . . Benedict doesn’t shy away from her characters’ very different faults as they grasp for courage and resilience during their dark times.” —Booklist
“[Benedict is] at the top of her game here. . . . The wolves indeed have the last word in Wolf Season, much as do the dogs in David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Benedict’s final chapter is appropriately titled ‘Howl,’ which brings to mind Allen Ginsberg and his poem of the same name—with its line ‘monstrous bombs!’ in canto II. Yet perhaps Ginsberg’s line from one of his other poems, ‘America,’ best sums it all up: ‘America when will we end the human war?’ Helen Benedict’s Wolf Season certainly gives us ample reasons to consider doing so.” —Woven Tale Press
“Gives readers a deep sense of what it takes to survive and the terrible toll war and loneliness extracts not only on those who go to war but also those waiting at home.” —North of Oxford
“Wolf Season takes contemporary war-and-mil-writing preoccupation with dogs to its fantastical-yet-logical extension. . . . Rin and Naema are compellingly drawn, as are Rin’s daughter Juney and Naema’s son Tariq and the three wolves, Gray, Silver, and Ebony. Most striking, however, are two male characters, Louis Martin and Todd Wycombe, both veterans struggling to be men worthy of respect.” —Time Now
“A novel of love, loss, and survival, Wolf Season delves into the complexities and murk of the after-war with blazing clarity. You will come to treasure these characters for their strengths and foibles alike. Helen Benedict has delivered yet again, and contemporary war literature is much the better for it.” —MATT GALLAGHER, author of Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War and Youngblood
“Fierce and vivid and full of hope, this story of trauma and resilience, of love and family, of mutual aid and solidarity in the aftermath of a brutal war is nothing short of magic. Helen Benedict is the voice of an American conscience that has all too often been silenced. To read these pages is to be transported to a world beyond hype and propaganda to see the human cost of war up close. This is not a novel that allows you to walk away unchanged.” —CARA HOFFMAN, author of Be Safe I Love You and Running
“The Iraq War. Disability. Women on and off the battlefield. AND WOLVES! . . . [An] extraordinary new novel.” —CAROLINE LEAVITT, author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World, at Carolineleavittville
“No one writes with more authority or cool-eyed compassion about the experience of women in war both on and off the battlefield than Helen Benedict. In Wolf Season, she shows us the complicated ways in which the lives of those who serve and those who don't intertwine and how—regardless of whether you are a soldier, the family of a soldier, or a refugee—the war follows you and your children for generations. Wolf Season is more than a novel for our times; it should be required reading.” —ELISSA SCHAPPELL, author of Use Me and Blueprints for Building Better Girls
Select Praise for Helen Benedict, Sand Queen, and The Lonely Soldier
“A most entertaining and accomplished writer.” —OSCAR HIJUELOS, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love and Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise
On Sand Queen
“This is The Things They Carried for women in Iraq.” —Boston Globe
“If you missed out on serving in the Iraq War, you can, if you’re willing, be catapulted right into the midst of some of its more challenging moments courtesy of Ms. Benedict’s gutsy prose. . . . Sand Queen [is] a novel that will leave you deeply unsettled if not shaken to the root of your being.” —Herald-Dispatch
“Told in compellingly vivid detail with the clear ring of truth every step of the way.” —Free Lance-Star
“[A] completely heartbreaking, vivid story of the particular difficulties of being not just a soldier, but a female soldier.” —Bustle
“In writing what might be the first major woman’s war story and alternating points of view between opposing sides, [Benedict] has created something enormously fresh and immediate.” —Chronogram
“[Benedict] is an exceptional writer and storyteller. Her gritty depiction of a soldier’s life in the Iraq desert is particularly well done.” —New York Journal of Books
“Benedict’s writing is impressive, passionate, and visceral. . . . Reading this book is the best literary path to understanding the particular challenges of being female in the military during warfare.” —Publishers Weekly “Best Contemporary War Novel” citation
“Funny, shocking, painful, and, at times, deeply disturbing, Sand Queen takes readers beyond the news and onto the battlefield.” —Booklist
“An eye-opening glimpse into a life that many Americans have never seen.” —Library Journal
“A convincing and affecting portrait of two resilient young women caught up in war.” —Shelf Awareness
“Every war eventually yields works of art which transcend politics and history and illuminate our shared humanity. Helen Benedict’s brilliant new novel has done just that with this century’s American war in Iraq. Sand Queen is an important book by one of our finest literary artists.” —ROBERT OLEN BUTLER, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain and Perfume River
“Every American who claims to value the lives of our soldiers should read this powerful, harrowing, and revelatory novel.” —VALERIE MARTIN, author of The Ghost of Mary Celeste and Sea Lovers
“Helen Benedict’s compelling story provides an intimate picture of what it means to be a soldier, what it’s like to live on the battlefield, and what the ethical choices are that our troops have had to make in Iraq. . . . At times funny, at times grimly painful, Sand Queen offers a new chapter in contemporary American history.” —ROXANA ROBINSON, author of Cost and Sparta
On The Lonely Soldier
“It’s outrageously immoral that our female soldiers have to fear many of the male soldiers they serve with, as well as being let down by the very Veterans Affairs system that’s supposed to help them out. Thanks to Helen Benedict, the world is watching!” —ROSEANNE BARR, Emmy Award–winning actor
“The Lonely Soldier is an important book, a crucial accounting of the shameful war on women who gave their bodies, lives, and souls for their country.” —EVE ENSLER, author of The Vagina Monologues and In the Body of the World
“No matter your politics, this book is vital. Helen Benedict’s brilliant and compassionate reporting is neither left nor right—it’s human.” —DALE MAHARIDGE, author of And Their Children After Them and Bringing Mulligan Home
“The Lonely Soldier tells an important and often ignored story about our military women. Benedict writes with skill and compassion, helping us understand what it feels like to be a woman soldier in Iraq. I recommend this book to everyone who cares about our soldiers.” —MARY PIPHER, author of Reviving Ophelia and Seeking Peace
“The Lonely Soldier will shock you and enrage you and bring you to tears. It’s must reading for everyone who cares about women, justice, fairness, the military, and the United States.” —KATHA POLLITT, award-winning columnist, The Nation
Helen Benedict on Wolf Season
Like many writers, I was something of a loner as a child, in love with reading. This was partly because my father was an anthropologist, so even though we were based in London, he was always whisking us off to live in far-away places for months or even years at a time, where I didn’t go to school and had few playmates aside from my sister. We lived in Mauritius for two years and the Seychelles for six months, islands in the Indian Ocean. The books I loved then were Mary Poppins, Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, Pippi Longstocking, the Oz books, and C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series—all novels, I realize now, that featured brave, rebellious, adventurous girls.
I wrote a novel at age eight and another at eleven.
At twelve, I read Jane Eyre, a book that infected me with a passion for social justice, as did Black Beauty. Whether for girls or horses, I wanted life to be fair! Later, when I was in my teens, we spent some time in Berkeley, California, during the time of Black Power and the Panthers and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Soul on Ice and went out on marches, and my passion for social justice grew into something more adult and political.
I went to high school and college in both the U.K. and the U.S., moving back and forth every few years. In college, I read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, among many other seminal works of feminism, firing up my passion for justice more than ever. And as a student, I worked in a women’s prison, which twelve years later formed the basis for my first novel, A World Like This. After graduate school, I moved to New York, and later spent a year in Paris.
I have always had a political side and a literary side, which is why I ended up being both a journalist and a novelist. My reading tastes, however, tend to lean toward fiction. I love Virginia Woolf and James Baldwin, Tolstoy and Dickens, Émile Zola, and Pat Barker’s trilogy on World War One, Reparation, which influenced my own war writing. And I still love everything by Charlotte Brontë, a feminist way ahead of her time, and by George Eliot, a psychologist ahead of hers.
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, I became determined to explore the effects of war on the human heart. I began by listening to dozens of veterans, both women and men, as well as to Iraqi refugees who had fled to the United States. All these people were eager to tell their stories, but sometimes, during our interviews, they would fall silent, hands shaking, eyes filling with tears. This moved me profoundly and led me to understand that the true story of war lay within those very silences: the private, internal world that has always been the territory of fiction.
Three years of this research led me to write The Lonely Soldier, a nonfiction book about women at war, and then Sand Queen, a novel set in Iraq. Now, here is Wolf Season, a novel about how war affects not only those who are caught up in it but also those who love them: the children, parents, and partners. The result is a story that attempts to reflect what I found in the silences and tears of soldiers and in the lonely eyes of Iraqi refugees: the story of what war does to the soul and the courage of those who are struggling to survive it.
I had many adventures researching Wolf Season. Most were moving, some sad, others uplifting—I am always amazed by the resilience of women and children. The Iraqi mother whose fifteen-year-old son had been killed in Baghdad yet who laughed when her nine-year-old son, upon hearing I am British, asked me if I’d written the Harry Potter series. The woman soldier in Oregon who lives in the woods with her wolves and who peppered her speech with extraordinarily colorful sayings that inspired me to create the character Rin Drummond. The young Iraqi woman who had lived through torture and near death but was so eager to advise me about Naema Jassim. I also had a wonderful time at Wolf Mountain, where I was virtually alone with several wolves for many hours, watching them play and sleep and eat. Wolves have an elegance and independence that is wildly beautiful.
I titled the book “Wolf Season” for three reasons: not only because the story contains wolves but also because wolves have long symbolized a range of things—from the evil to the spiritual—and because I learned that the phrase “wolf season” can be used to mean a time of madness. War is a time of madness, as is its devastation on human beings.
D.H. Lawrence once said, “War is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters.”
I wrote Wolf Season because I, too, wanted to follow the war home.
About the Author
Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University, writes frequently about justice, women, soldiers, and war. She is the author of seven novels, including Sand Queen, a Publishers Weekly “Best Contemporary War Novel.” A recipient of both the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Benedict is also the author of five works of nonfiction and the play The Lonely Soldier Monologues: Women at War in Iraq. She lives in New York.
• The Kansas City Public Library and Kansas City Star have selected Wolf Season for the city-wide “FYI Book Club.” Join the discussion, read an excerpt from the novel, and find an interview with Helen Benedict in the Kansas City Star: http://bit.ly/2irsfL7 • Helen Benedict discusses Wolf Season and the challenges of writing about women and war with Publishers Weekly: http://bit.ly/2fECvxO; Powell’s Books: http://bit.ly/2g0q6kQ; author Caroline Leavitt: http://bit.ly/2zih8ba; Read Her Like an Open Book: http://bit.ly/2xzz4ft; Snowflakes in a Blizzard: http://bit.ly/2fZhlru; and on the Weekly Reader Radio Show: http://bit.ly/2yiQe4N • Helen Benedict shares her recommendations for the “Best Contemporary Iraqi Writing About War” with the Literary Hub: http://bit.ly/2hD7iJ3 • Listen to more discussions with Helen Benedict on war writing, soldiers, sexual assault, and violence against women on NPR’s All Things Considered: http://n.pr/2yBghCz; WPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge: http://bit.ly/2nVdIJm; KCRW’s Press Play: http://kcrw.co/2oG4P55; WAMC’s Midday Magazine: http://bit.ly/2pa5qgM; PRI’s The World: http://bit.ly/2ohKfFO; CBC’s Sunday Edition: http://bit.ly/2oEkfoP; and BBC’s Start the Week: http://bbc.in/1MMkVf5. • Watch Helen Benedict discuss women in the military on Democracy Now: http://bit.ly/2oiaICR and C-SPAN’s Book TV: http://cs.pn/2oPz5eh. • Read more from the author about her novel Sand Queen, which first introduced readers to the character Naema, an Iraqi medical student who now appears in Wolf Season as a refugee working in a VA medical clinic, at Guernica: http://bit.ly/2omT5Ba • Download the Wolf Season reading group guide: http://bit.ly/2pJezt1 • Visit the author’s website: www.helenbenedict.com
For an interview with Helen Benedict about Wolf Season, please read on.
$16.99 / 320 pages / Book club edition with reading group guide & other extras / October 2017 Trade Paperback Original ISBN: 978-1-942658-30-6 / eBook ISBN: 978-1-942658-31-3 Distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution: 1-800-283-3572 Dept. of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, OBV A 612, New York, NY 10016 telephone: 212-263-7802 visit us on the web at: www.blpress.org
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A Conversation with Helen Benedict
Q: You interviewed dozens of veterans as well as Iraqi refugees before writing about them in your nonfiction book The Lonely Soldier, your novel Sand Queen, and now, in Wolf Season. What is it about their stories that continues to inspire your writing?
A: All the Iraqis I met, and most of the veterans, had been through truly terrible traumas—war, after all, offers little else. What inspired me was their resilience and their honesty. Parents who had lost children, soldiers who had lost friends, adults who had lost brothers and sisters and spouses, and women who had been sexually attacked or tortured—all revealed a determination and generosity of spirit I found deeply moving. They told me their stories because they wanted to help others who had lived through similar circumstances. The impulse of many who have been through trauma is to help others. This speaks to the best side of the human spirit, just as war often reveals the worst.
Q: Your novel prominently features three mothers. Rin is an Iraq war veteran and Naema is an Iraqi refugee. Beth, on the other hand, is neither a soldier nor a refugee but the wife of a deployed marine. What inspired the creation of her character? What were you hoping she would add to the narrative?
A: As this novel is about the aftereffects of war—about war brought home—I thought a military spouse like Beth belonged in the story. More American women experience war through their husbands or sons, boyfriends or fathers than they do by serving themselves. Beth is one of these. Also, I liked the idea of the three women in the novel representing different views of war: Rin as a veteran, Naema as an Iraqi, Beth as a military spouse.
Q: Rin reacts to the world around her in deeply honest yet troubling ways. Were you concerned that readers might find her unsympathetic?
A: I like characters who make me, as a reader, keep changing my mind. People are puzzling and self-contradictory and vulnerable and imperfect, and even the most flawed character can be sympathetic and heartbreaking. I hope readers will feel this way about Rin.
Programs that pair veterans with rescue animals have shown great success in helping to alleviate some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Were those programs on your mind when you made Rin’s wolves such an integral part of this novel?
I was not thinking of therapy animals when I brought the wolves into Wolf Season but of a real veteran I once interviewed who lived in the woods with wolves. Rin is not like her at all, but the idea intrigued me. Later, long after I’d written a draft of Wolf Season, I found out that quite a few veterans do like to keep wolves, and that some therapy programs do indeed pair wolves and vets. However, I suspect many vets are drawn to wolves not so much as therapeutic animals but because wolves represent something pure and wild and untamable and strong, as well as dangerous and protective. This is certainly why they appeal to Rin.
Q: Readers were first introduced to the character of Naema in Sand Queen, when she was a medical student in Iraq. In Wolf Season, we meet her again, now working as a doctor in a VA medical clinic. When did you know you hadn’t finished telling her story? Will we meet her or Tariq again?
A: I decided to continue Naema’s story in 2010, as I came to know more Iraqi refugees and saw the terrible fallout from the Iraq War in the Middle East. Having been so moved by the Iraqis I met and interviewed, I felt saddened by the negative stereotypes of Muslims gaining popularity around the world, and I wanted to push against that with Naema and Tariq. Now it seems more important than ever for us to pay attention to people like Naema and Tariq in all their humanity. So yes, Naema and Tariq are not going away yet.
Q: Louis, an Army veteran, and Todd, an active-duty marine, reveal other aspects of war’s toll on the human psyche. Do you believe that men and women experience war and its aftermath in essentially different ways?
A: I don’t like to generalize about men and women because no one truth belongs to everybody, but I will say that many women do experience war and its aftermath differently than men. Civilian women and children die in greater numbers in today’s wars than men, for one. And as I found while researching my nonfiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, women soldiers are still often treated as outcasts by their comrades, along with being sexually assaulted at a rate of nearly one in three, which means many women veterans suffer the double trauma of combat and sexual assault. Furthermore, some 90 percent of women are sexually harassed in the military. (Men are harassed and assaulted within the military, too, but not in nearly the same proportions.) Having to fight without the compensation of camaraderie is a cruelty experienced by far too many military women, and this alters their view of both the military and war. Q: The three children in Wolf Season handle the challenges they face in very different ways. Why are their perspectives so vital to the story? Was it a challenge to capture their voices in such an authentic way?
A: The juxtaposition of children and war is particularly poignant, for their very frankness and innocence strips away the glamorizing lies that so often cloak our discussions of war. Valor and strength, weaponry and heroism—what do these matter to a boy who has lost his father and his leg, or to a girl who has lost her sight, or to a child whose family has been torn apart by the trauma of war? Worldwide, children suffer and die from war more than anyone else, yet they are rarely given a voice.
Also, I have written from the point of view of children before, particularly in my earlier novel, The Edge of Eden. Taking on the voice of a child enables me to cut through to the heart of things. And then, I am a mother and have learned to listen to and relish the way children talk.
Q: Novelists sometimes talk about being surprised by their characters. Did any of the characters in Wolf Season surprise you?
All my characters surprised me. Rin, with her complications—her distrust of people and her love of her daughter and wolves—was a constant surprise. The children with their quirks and stubbornness. Naema, with her hard-earned patience. If a writer isn’t surprised by her characters, something is wrong. Creating a character is like getting to know a friend: if she never surprises, she is not going to be interesting.
Q: Wolf Season takes place in upstate New York, and its towns and woods almost become characters themselves. Why was it important to set the story in a small American community?
A: Many enlisted soldiers come from economically depressed small towns all over the United States, especially towns that offer few jobs or opportunities. My fictional Huntsville and Potterstown are placed near the real Slingerlands in Albany County, where a large proportion of families have sons and daughters in the military. Furthermore, as I found out after I began writing, hundreds of Iraqi refugees have been settled in that area, so I was able to make Naema’s story historically accurate, too.
Q: What were you trying to explore in Wolf Season that separates it from your earlier work?
A: Everyone who has been through the horror of war brings it home in one way or another, and this, in turn, affects families and communities. Put another way, when a soldier is wounded, physically or psychologically, so is everyone who loves her. Likewise with a victim of war. Sand Queen took place mostly in Iraq, during the war itself. With Wolf Season, I wanted to follow Naema and her family after they fled the war, and to explore how the Iraq War has affected all of us at home in America.