Slightly More Good Than Harm: The Ethan Caldwell Stories

By Trey Nantz

Ethan Caldwell is twenty-five years old when he signs a contract with a private military company and deploys to Iraq as a legal compliance observer embedded with special operations teams. Over six months in 2008-2009, he evolves from naive law school graduate to hardened participant in the moral complexities of counterinsurgency warfare, earning a scar and a burden he'll carry for years.

Six years later, practicing estate law in South Carolina, Ethan receives a call: Yousef, the Iraqi interpreter who served alongside him and lost his brother for helping Americans, is in immigration detention facing deportation. To save him, Ethan must confront the war he's spent years trying to forget and finally answer the question that haunted him in Iraq: are we doing slightly more good than harm?

A debut collection exploring war, moral ambiguity, and the obligations that outlast combat.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FW883WC3
• ISBN13: 9798993538006
• Release Date: October 2025
• Publisher: Carolopolis Press
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"