Photo by Peter Tsai
What Tim O'Brien did with Vietnam, his fellow Austinite Brian Van Reet does with Iraq in his debut novel Spoils. Van Reet makes the abstract come alive. The gritty, poetic tale of a female soldier kidnapped by Baghdad jihadists is the first Texas winner of Austin Community College's national Balcones Fiction Prize and also earned the Writers' League of Texas Book Award. A UT Michener grad, Van Reet won a Bronze Star for valor in Baghdad, and his reality brings truth to his fiction.
