War may end on the battlefield, but its consequences rarely obey a cease-fire. In Soldier’s Joy, M. F. Jones brings that reality home with Avery Gowan, an Iraq veteran carrying the guilt of a mission that killed three of his friends and maimed another. His return becomes even more complicated when he encounters a ghost who looks disturbingly like him—and who insists that a woman Avery has only recently met may be the person who can help him.
That woman is Jessie Gibbs, whose connection to Avery’s Civil War ancestor, Lemuel Sanders, began with the discovery of his unmarked grave and extends into territory Avery cannot yet understand. As Book II of The Sentinel Heart Trilogy, Soldier’s Joy links the wounds of two wars through family history, a supernatural guardian, and a relationship in which both Avery and Jessie are keeping consequential secrets.
Romance: Historical, Supernatural, Military
Release Date: Sep 28, 2026
Publisher: Fieldwood Books
Category: Adult Fiction (18 yrs +)
Series: Book II of The Sentinel Heart Trilogy
Content Rating: PG-13 + M: Soldier's Joy contains wartime violence, the suicide of a minor character, two slightly explicit sex scenes though without gratuitous detail, and profanities like s**t, a**hole, and God damn it, though no f-words.
Avery Gowan is barely home from Iraq when a ghost appears to him—one that looks disturbingly like him. The apparition says that Jessie Gibbs, a woman he’s just met, can help him escape the guilt of the mission that killed three of his friends and maimed another.
A few days earlier, at a service honoring his family’s Civil War relative, Lemuel Sanders, Avery was drawn to Jessie’s quiet strength and calm presence. Jessie, a musician, had been camping with her Civil War-style band the previous year when she discovered Lemuel’s unmarked woodland grave, leading to his identification and proper burial after 145 years.
Jessie and Avery begin a relationship, but his anger, recklessness, and self-doubt threaten to tear them apart. When the ghost saves him from a deadly motorcycle crash, Avery hides the truth about his spectral guardian, afraid Jessie will see him as broken beyond repair.
But Jessie is hiding something too—a secret about her true connection to Lemuel Sanders that may cost her Avery’s love.
The sequel to the award-winning Stones River, Soldier’s Joy nonetheless stands alone as a haunting, emotionally charged story about how the past refuses to stay buried, how healing demands facing it, and how love gives the courage to do so.
The Author Gives Us Another Unique Story. I enjoyed Stones River, the first book in The Sentinel Heart Trilogy, so I was looking forward to seeing where M. F. Jones would take us in the next book. As much as I liked the first book, I think I liked Soldier's Joy just a little more. This time, Jones brings Civil War history together with the story of a soldier returning home from Iraq, along with romance, family secrets, and the supernatural thread connecting the past and present. I really liked how those pieces were woven together, especially as the connection between Avery and Lemuel began to unfold. The book has plenty of military and historical detail, but it never felt like I was being handed a history lesson. It all fits naturally into the story, and the writing flows easily, which made it very readable for me.
Expect to Connect to the Characters. Avery was probably my favorite part of the book. He comes home from Iraq carrying an enormous amount of guilt, and he is definitely not a perfect character. He can be angry, reckless, stubborn, and frustrating, but those flaws made sense considering everything he was trying to deal with. What I really liked was his desire to be a better man, even when he didn't always know how to get there. Jessie balances him well, but she also has her own history and a pretty big secret involving Lemuel, so she never feels like she is simply there to fix Avery. I enjoyed watching their relationship develop, but I also liked getting to know them individually. I had read Stone's River before this one, and while I didn't remember all the details from that first book, I never felt lost here, and immediately reconnected with Jones' characters and settled right into the supernatural elements this time around.
Would I recommend Soldier's Joy? Definitely. In fact, if you enjoyed Stones River, I think you'll like this one even more—I did. It has historical fiction, romance, military fiction, mystery, and a touch of the paranormal, but underneath it all is a very human story about guilt, grief, healing, and figuring out how to move forward when you can't change what happened in the past. I especially liked that the supernatural side never overshadowed the characters or what Avery was going through.
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Soldier’s Joy places its most important conflict in the space between what has happened and what its characters are willing to face. Avery cannot change the Iraq mission that cost his friends so dearly, and Lemuel’s death belongs to a war fought generations earlier, yet neither history is finished exerting its influence. Jessie’s place between those stories makes the novel’s secrets particularly consequential: the person Avery has been told can help him is also keeping information capable of changing what he believes about her.
That convergence of military history, supernatural intervention, and concealed family connections gives this second Sentinel Heart novel its own identity. Avery may have come home from Iraq, but Soldier’s Joy is concerned with the much harder question of what coming home requires after the fighting is over—and what can happen when the past arrives there waiting for you.
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