WHEN THEY CAME HOME

A Midwestern woman struggles through challenges with her shellshocked WWI veteran husband in Lewis’ historical novel.

Milton is a young man from Missouri who’s about to be shipped off to Europe to fight in World War I. He and his fellow young recruits are uncertain what the future holds as they arrive in France. The trenches don’t see much action, and Milton and his compatriots play many games of cards. When the inevitable attack comes, an injured Milton is briefly taken away for medical treatment. (“Two days’ respite, then bandaged, limping, gun in hand, he’s sent back to the trenches on a supply wagon.”) After a more serious attack, Milton is returned home, and his war is over. In Enterprise, Kansas, a young woman named Edith meets some men who’ve been hired to work in the fields. Milton is among them, and Edith, who is privately worried about winding up an old maid, takes a liking to him. He reciprocates, and they get married, but there’s a problem: Milton appears able to work in the fields and at the mercantile, but he is shellshocked. Doctors working in the fledgling field of psychology urge him to suppress his memories, and Milton is at times checked into hospitals. Milton and Edith have kids, but a long-delayed pension isn’t enough to live on, and Milton continues to struggle. The couple fights to find a way to stay together and survive despite difficult odds. In Lewis’ postwar novel, the author draws from her family’s history to craft the story of Milton and Edith, and the narrative is both concise and full of detail. Whether depicting the battlefield or the Great Plains, the author excels at setting the scene and describing the emotional connections the characters have to places and to other people. The suffering of WWI returnees was doubtlessly immense, and the help they received was minimal; through this personal story, Lewis illuminates that pain and how affecting it was for those who loved the sufferers.

A lean, powerful novel about war’s psychological aftermath.