Helen Benedict’s 2009 nonfiction book, The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq , revealed not only what it was like to be a woman at war, but the abusive treatment of women who served in Iraq between 2003 and 2006 by their fellow soldiers and supervisors, including rape and gang rape. This book inspired the 2012 documentary The Invisible War . Both The Lonely Soldier and The Invisible War were in the forefront of reporting on this injustice. I wondered why Benedict turned to fiction to expand upon this ongoing narrative.

“Almost all the many women I interviewed for The Lonely Soldier had not only endured the horrors of war, but had been relentlessly sexually harassed or assaulted by their own comrades while they were serving,” she explained. “These double-traumas were so dreadful that frequently, during our interviews, the women would fall silent, their hands shaking and their eyes filling with tears; while at other times they would deflect my questions with humor.…