New Books Network Interview: Terri Lewis
A former ballerina who turns to fiction and produces, in order, a wonderful historical novel about the little-known second wife of King John (of Magna Carta fame), a novella based on the lives of her grandparents and the lasting emotional effects of the First World War, and a forthcoming novel about two ballerinas whose lives diverge because of the impact of Roe v. Wade, Terri Lewis pulls readers in with her beautiful writing and compassionate portrayals of people in difficult circumstances. Read on to find out more, and don’t forget to listen to my New Books Network interview with the author, which went live earlier this week.
As usual, the rest of this post comes from New Books in Historical Fiction.
It seems likely that most listeners to this podcast channel have heard of “shell shock,” the old name for what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder (usually abbreviated as PTSD). Even today, the long-term effects of combat tend to be under-estimated, but that was much more true in the years following World War I, when the diagnosis of “shell shock” first appeared.
Terri Lewis’s When They Came Home (Miami University Press, 2026) tackles this problem head-on. Based on the lives of the author’s grandparents, this beautifully written, compassionate novella follows the war experiences and long-term effects of combat on not only the soldiers themselves but their families, forced to confront what to them often appears incomprehensible behavior that affects their loved ones’ ability to function in the post-war world.
The story focuses on Milton Fieth, a twenty-one-year-old farmer from Kansas who, like the other young men on his train, enlists out of a sense of duty to his country, hope of glory, and a free trip to France. The reality of the trenches horrifies him, and the loss of cherished comrades leaves him with massive survivor guilt for which he has no name. A year later, he’s back home, where he meets a young woman named Edith, whom he courts and eventually marries. Only as the years turn into decades do both Milton and Edith realize that the scars left by those few horrific months will never heal completely.
