Critical Praise

“STILL COME HOME is personal, global, tender, brutal, and deeply introspective --- in short, a powerhouse of a book. Katey Schultz has written one of the finest works of fiction yet to come out of the Long Wars... [T]he wrong and the right of it, the mercy, the love, the blood-letting and profit-making, Schultz captures it all in this splendid novel.”

—Ben Fountain, author of BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK and BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY BURN AGAIN

“Schultz's ability to enter into these radically different lives is nothing short of breathtaking. There is tragedy here, but also humor, moral blindness, along with deep courage. And the desert holds it all.”

—Abigail DeWitt, author of NEWS OF OUR LOVED ONES

“...a remarkable book, impressive in its breadth and depth of story, engaging with its finely-drawn characters, and breathtaking in its pace.”

—David Abrams, author of FOBBIT and BRAVE DEEDS

“Start reading and before you know it, you’re miles inside these characters’ lives... By the end, there is much to consider, much to hope for and wish away. Schultz’s razor-sharp syntax casts a spell that lasts through the book itself, and when it’s done, readers will long for whatever place they recognize as home, too.”

—John Mauk, author of FIELD NOTES FOR THE EARTHBOUND

“STILL COME HOME took me deep into the chasm between love of country and love of family. As I watched Schultz's characters face impossible decisions with an indomitable will to live, I started highlighting passages I really loved. Pretty soon, I was highlighting entire pages --- that’s how good this is.”

—Desiree Cooper, author of KNOW THE MOTHER

“In STILL COME HOME, Katey Schultz brings a psychologist’s insight into character and a journalist’s unflinching search for truth to her depiction of the war in Afghanistan. With a compelling plot, and in prose that is both gutsy and lyrical...Schultz has staked a claim as one of the best writers on the war in the Middle East, in a class with Helen Benedict (SAND QUEEN, WOLF SEASON), Phil Klay (REDEPLOYMENT), and Roxana Robinson (SPARTA).”

—Bill Wolfe

“STILL COME HOME is a beautiful book. I know what it means to get inside another world --- this one in particular --- and I'm full of admiration. I read this and felt as if I was standing right there, alongside the characters. Katey Schultz’s beautiful prose allows us into a place and time most of us don’t know, but which affects us all.”

—Roxana Robinson, author of SPARTA

“Katey Schultz's STILL COME HOME is an acutely perceptive novel about survival and conscience in war. Her three main protagonists --- a young Afghan woman, an unwilling Taliban peon, and a US soldier --- are all struggling in their own ways to find a path through chaos and tragedy while retaining their humanity. The result is a deeply engaging novel about the moral quest of all human hearts: how to do right in a world full of wrong.”

—Helen Benedict, author of WOLF SEASON and THE LONELY SOLDIER

“You hold your breath for each of the main characters because Schultz has made you care, viscerally. She does this through alchemic language you’ve never read before, about feelings you’re convinced you’d have if you were on the ground with them, wondering what you would do, wondering if you’d be able to --- after all this --- still come home.”

—Rita Dragonette, author of THE FOURTEENTH OF SEPTEMBER

“What really amazes me about Katey’s writing is that she has an uncanny ability to take the reader into the scenes, the villages, the lives of the people who are experiencing war. She captures perfectly the complex emotions of the soldiers in combat, the people of the country where they fight, the returning warriors, their families and friends as each tries to make sense of their lives. She’s a unique and very, very talented writer.”

—Jack Segal, former senior US diplomat and former chief political advisor to NATO forces in Afghanistan from 2001-2011

“[Schultz’s] novel’s narrative lays bare timeless dilemmas --- desperation, loyalty, the sticky demands of love --- but the situations her main characters find themselves in are so thoroughly modern, the focus so timely, relevant, and startling that it opened me up, as a reader and human...”

—Hypertext Magazine

“[Schultz] soaks her writing in such detail that even the smallest narrative observations evoke emotional weight.”

—Matt Peiken for NPR Regional Spotlight

“STILL COME HOME is a novel in which hope and hopelessness live side-by-side in unequal measure.”

—Consequence Magazine