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.…