From the award-winning author of "Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq" comes this collection that tells the stories of America's fighting women as they come home from war.

Deeply personal and emotional accounts of more than a dozen American soldiers returning home from the war in Iraq; includes women from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard. Inspiring stories of courage while recovering from both physical and psychological wounds along with the frustrations of navigating the military bureaucracy to get help. How combat affects someone's entire life, including her family and friends.

Traumatized veterans are often diagnosed as suffering from a psychiatric disorder and prescribed a regimen of psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs. But why, asks psychologist Paula J. Caplan in this impassioned book, is it a mental illness to be devastated by war or other intolerable experiences such as military sexual assault? What is a mentally healthy response to death, destruction, and moral horror? In When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home, Caplan argues that the standard treatment of therapy and drugs is often actually harmful. It adds to veterans' burdens by making them believe wrongly that they should have "gotten over it"; it isolates them behind the closed doors of the therapist's office; and it makes them rely on often harmful drugs. The numbers of traumatized veterans from past and present wars who continue to suffer demonstrate the ineffectiveness of this approach. Sending anguished veterans off to talk to therapists, writes Caplan, conveys the message that the rest of us don't want to listen—or that we don't feel qualified to listen. As a result, the truth about war is kept under wraps. Most of us remain ignorant about what war is really like—and continue to allow our governments to go to war without much protest. Caplan proposes an alternative: that we welcome veterans back into our communities and listen to their stories, one-on-one. (She provides guidelines for conducting these conversations.) This would begin a long overdue national discussion about the realities of war, and it would start the healing process for our returning veterans.

Profiles twelve women soldiers who have served in the Iraq War, describing their experiences in the war, discussing the pressures of the job, and touching on the difficulties of being a woman in the military.

This author was a journalist who moved to Paris just months before the outbreak of World War I. She published four collections of her wartime letters to friends: A Hilltop on the Marne, On the edge of the war zone, The Peak of the load, and When Johnny comes marching home. This volume (the final set) is a collection of letters that describe her experiences in the months immediately following the end of World War I.

The international bestselling author of The Corsican delivers “a carefully constructed and evocative Civil War-era tale.” —John Lutz, New York Times–bestselling author When Johnny Came Marching Home is a mystery, a love story, and William Heffernan’s best book to date. The novel tells the story of three boys who grow up in rural Vermont in a seemingly indestructible friendship, then see their lives ruined as they go off to fight in America’s “great and noble war.” Trapped in a what appears to be an endless bloodbath—vividly presented with Heffernan’s meticulous historical research—the boys gradually begin to change until their close-knit childhood ties are little more than a fractured memory. By war’s end, one boy is dead, one returns a physically crippled and emotionally compromised man, and the third comes home as an unfeeling psychopath. The novel turns on the subsequent murder of the psychopath, and the offer of redemption for the wounded young man who must investigate the crime. When Johnny Came Marching Home is a story about war and how it affects the lives of all who become a part of it, both directly and peripherally. Although set during the Civil War, this book casts shadows of what we endure today and the horrors to which young soldiers are subjected. “Heffernan swings his vivid tale back and forth between past and present, war and peace—a neat tour de force he pulls off with admirable assurance.” —Kirkus Reviews “A powerful, intriguing, and complex novel about the intricacies of friendship and the devastating effects of war.” —Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Death Artist

Life is tough for veterans, especially female veterans. They have much to deal with and much to heal from: combat, physical and psychological wounds, sexual harassment and assault, trauma, stress, chains of command, the VA. Now more than ever these veterans are facing their problems head on. In this inspiring new book, Kirsten Holmstedt, trusted chronicler of women soldiers and veterans, tells the ups-and-downs stories of veterans struggling with the aftereffects of military service.