It has been eighteen months since Reverend Clare Fergusson left for Iraq with her National Guard unit. The author weaves current day, letting readers peek inside of a support group meeting of returning vets, with back story of when the vets returned home three months prior. One is a physician who is suffering from short term memory loss due to a head injury. Another is a nineteen-year-old paraplegic, a Miller’s Kill police officer having a hard time managing anger, and Tally McNabb who had worked as a bookkeeper for one of the construction support companies. When Tally is found dead in her swimming pool, all evidence points to suicide. But Clare isn’t convinced. Prior to her death, Russ had helped to break up a fight in a local bar between Tally’s husband and a warrant officer she was close to in Iraq, Quentan Nichols. But after talking to Wyler McNabb and Nichols, he still isn’t convinced Tally’s death was anything but a suicide. Clare is battling her own demons of pills and alcohol and trying to keep Russ from finding out. She enlists the aid of her support group to discover the truth behind Tally’s death. The author paints a grim picture of the emotional and mental fallout from the war while pitting Russ against an old nemesis, John Opperman. Russ’ late wife had worked with Opperman. When Russ learns Tally used to work for Opperman, he starts to take another look at exactly what Tally had been working on, especially since there had been a reported theft of millions of U.S. dollars from Iraq. There is humor in ONE WAS A SOLDIER as Clare and Russ pick up their affair where it left off. If there were any characters not covered enough to my liking it was Russ’s and Clare’s mothers. Russ’s mother was always entertaining but other than a brief phone call she never enters the picture. Clare’s mother was in town for an “event” but was never introduced to the reader. It could be I sped right past any reference to her not planning on being in town. But even with those two omissions, ONE WAS A SOLDIER was another fantastic read and well worth the wait.