Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit SHAPIRO, HOST: Less than 1 percent of American families include a veteran. Those who did serve feel like they are constantly being asked to explain the past 15 years of war, and some of those vets are now doing that through fiction. NPR's Quil Lawrence spoke to several new authors who are trying to find the balance between being spokespeople for their wars and simply writing good novels. QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: For the majority of veterans, there were no big Hollywood gun fights. Not even the graphic novels about these wars are action thrillers. MAX URIARTE: I think you can get a lot more nuance, a lot more meaning out of a story that isn't based in some kind of, like, grand battle. And also, like, my deployment to Iraq wasn't like that. LAWRENCE: Max Uriarte is the author and illustrator of the graphic novel "The White Donkey." It follows a young Marine's journey to and from Iraq. It's mostly downtime at checkpoints and on patrols, which leaves
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