Sand Queen

June 13, 2011
Two women, an Iraqi refugee whose father and young brother were detained by American soldiers, and a 19-year-old American Army Specialist, wrestle with the complexities of war in Benedict's thrilling and thoughtful new novel. Hot on the heels of the shock and awe attack of 2003, soldier Kate Brady meets Naema Jassim at Camp Bucca, a huge U.S. prison in Iraq. Naema and other Iraqis come daily in search of men detained by the Americans. Something about Naema, her English skills or medical background, calls to Kate, and they form an awkward relationship based in need. Wanting to do something good, Kate investigates the fate of Naema's family. Both women struggle with the war, the death of innocents, abuses of soldiers (both male and female), and atrocities witnessed; they dream of "a world where people have normal nonviolent lives." Kate's eventual deteriorationâfrom an attempted rape and the official and unofficial backlash that follows, to the loss of a fellow female soldierâleads to her breakdown and hospitalization. Naema's stoicism in the face of hopelessness makes sense, and contrasts well with Kate's struggle to stay strong. Though Benedict (The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq) might have found Naema's soul, she never brings her off the page. Kate, however, is a character readers won't soon forget.

July 15, 2011

This bleak novel explores the horrendous impact of the Iraq war on women, both soldiers and civilians.

Based on research conducted for her nonfiction study of women serving in Iraq (The Lonely Soldier, 2009, etc.), Benedict's fictional portrayal alternates the accounts of Kate, a young specialist stationed at Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in Iraq, and Naema, a medical student whose family flees to the region after the catastrophic invasion and looting of Bagdad in 2003. Kate is one of three women in a barracks housing 33. Her worst enemies are not Iraqis (derogatorily known as hajjis) but her sergeant, Kormick, and another soldier nicknamed Boner. They sexually assault Kate (the exact nature of the assault is never revealed) on the day she is transferred to another detail, keeping watch in a guard tower overlooking the prison camp at Bucca. Shortly after Naema's family moves in with her grandmother, American soldiers arrest her father (crippled by torture under Saddam) and preteen brother. Naema goes daily to the camp, where she encounters Kate, who bucks authority to try to get information regarding Naema's relatives. The kindness of Kate's comrade Jimmy is so unexpected in this snakepit of a milieu that love between the two, though it exacerbates Kate's dilemma, is inevitable. As the pressures on Kate mount (her tough, seemingly invincible bunkmate is raped by Kormick and Boner, and Kate's attempts to file charges are laughed off), she revenges herself on the Iraqi detainees, who also single her out for torment because she is a woman. When, mistaking him for one of her prisoner-harassers, she brutalizes Naemas' father, her spiral of self-destruction accelerates. The enormity of the problems—the woeful inadequacy of soldier's equipment, the heat, the IEDs, the yawning gap between the mission of "liberation" and the chaos inflicted on Iraqis—that Benedict attempts to pack into such a brief space overwhelms the novel, fragmenting the storytelling into vivid but regrettably sketchy segments.

A flawed but unforgettable testament.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011
Army Specialist Kate Brady has been deployed to Iraq. She and her fellow soldiers are serving in a remote army base, a makeshift prison camp housing Iraqi detainees. There she meets young medical student Naema, whose father and younger brother are being held. Kate agrees to let Naema act as a translator providing information to an increasingly angry mob of prisoners' families that gathers daily at the prison gates. Both women are facing uncertain futures. For Naema, the war has threatened home and family, and starvation is looming. For Kate, who joined the military to prove her toughness to her father, service has brought the violence of roadside bombings and a litany of abuse from male colleagues. This is an eye-opening novel that allows readers to step into the combat boots of a young, inexperienced female soldier living and working in a place where the line between friend and foe is nearly impossible to distinguish. Funny, shocking, painful, and, at times, deeply disturbing, Sand Queen takes readers beyond the news and onto the battlefield.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)