Since 2001, U.S. women went marching into war in ways never seen before. Serving in foreign lands, they frisked people at checkpoints, searched for bombs, drove trucks while under fire and emptied their weapons against their enemies.

More than 225,350 female service members have been deployed for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, representing 11 percent of the total number of U.S. troops...

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Jeanette Steele, Union-Tribune (San Diego), Sept 22, 2009

The genesis of Kirsten Holmstedt's new book about female Iraq War veterans returning home stems from observing some of those who came to her prior book tour, on women in combat.

”I remember looking at this woman who had served in Iraq and obviously had a total case of PTSD,” Holmstedt said, referring to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. “I could hear all the stories in the world, but to look into these women's eyes and see how much they were hurting, that was what really struck me when they were on the book tour.”....

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Kira Goldenberg, The Day Newspaper (Connecticut), August 11, 2009

As Kirsten Holmstedt traveled the country in 2007 to promote her first book, Band of Sisters, about women in combat, “I’d run into female veterans and I’d realize the battle wasn’t over when they came home,” she said.

“It was going on inside of them,” Holmstedt said. “They hadn’t finished.”

One said the war didn’t start until the day she got home. Holmstedt decided she had a responsibility to give their stories a voice....

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Donita Naylor, The Providence Journal, August 10, 2009

Imagine for a minute being out to dinner in Wilmington. The waitress has a USMC tattoo. Would the assumption be that this tattoo symbolizes her career or the career of a masculine male figure in her life? If it’s assumed she was demonstrating her love for the man in her life, that’s probably a popular conclusion. My mother, an Air-Force veteran, served during Desert Storm, and I still can’t help but assume the latter...

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Tiffanie Gabrielse, Encore Book Review, July 27, 2009

Two years ago Wilmington author Kirsten Holmstedt profiled the lives of female service members in Iraq and Afghanistan, examining the roles they played in the military roles that brought them under fire, no matter what the stated policy of the United States is about women in combat. She's just released a follow-up which looks at what happens to those women as they, like their male counterparts, endure multiple deployments in America's ongoing wars. George Olsen has more.

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George Olsen, Public Radio East, July 23, 2009

"In her follow-up to "Band of Sisters," Holmstedt looks at America's frontline female soldiers fighting in Iraq -- and finds out what happens when these brave women return home. The author discovered that reaction to women combat vets is different. "A male veteran's friends, family, co-workers and community understand and more or less accept his presence in combat," Holmstedt tells Required Reading. "Many civilians do neither, though, if the veteran is female. A woman returning from war, then, having taken pride in her competence as a military professional and her success in combat, is frequently dismissed or second-guessed by people who believe she shouldn't have been in a combat role at all."

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Billy Heller, New York Post Required Reading, July 5, 2009

Kirsten Holmstedt sat at her keyboard and cried. She couldn’t write a word.

She was working on the story of CJ Robison, a master sergeant with Iowa’s Army National Guard. “Her blood runs [Army] green,” Holmstedt said. “This woman loves her country.”
After a tour of duty running convoys in Iraq, however, Robison “came home broken,” Holmstedt said. After surviving multiple explosions of IEDs (improvised explosive devices), the sergeant had lost much of her hearing. She suffered headaches and had trouble keeping her balance. Her speech slowed. Her voice began to tremble. Back home, she completed studies to become a nurse but couldn’t take state board exams because ...

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Ben Steelman, Star News, July 4, 2009

"All opinions about today’s wars aside, The Girls Come Marching Home is a must-read for anyone concerned about women or war. Gunfire, IEDs, child soldiers, racism, sexism and death are shown as part of wartime routine, with people in the armed forces making split-second decisions no human should ever have to make or imagine."

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Shira Tarrant, girlwpen.com, July 17, 2009

Former Jacksonville resident Kristen Holmstedt said she took a risk with her second book.

"Some of the stories are going to be controversial, but I didn't want to shy away from controversy," said Holmstedt, who now lives in Wilmington. "War is ugly, coming home is ugly and (Michelle Wilmot's) story is an example of it." ...

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Deanna Murphy, JD News, July 8, 2009

Kirsten Holmstedt is the first featured author in our Path Lighters series.

Author Kirsten Holmstedt’s first book, Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq, won a Golden Quill Award from the American Author’s Association, as well as the hearts of thousands of readers. Her second book, The Girls Come Marching Home (Stackpole Books) hit stores July 4th. Kristin, a skilled writer, researcher, public speaker and promoter, offered to give us some insight into her journey so far....

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Interview with Life's a Bitch Books, July 6, 2009

All of this is epic stuff. Earlier today, after having just finished the book, I noticed myself looking at young women I saw at the gas station and supermarket, and wondering, "Is she a combat vet? She COULD be." How many of us did that before the publication of "Band of Sisters" and, now, "The Girls Come Marching Home"? Ms. Holmstedt's books are incrementally transitioning us as Americans into people who routinely and without surprise see women as fighters for our country...thereby adding another nuance to what Shakespeare called woman's "infinite variety."

D.E. Weber, July 3, 2009