Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa Army National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a year's tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he befriended Jawad Arash. Based upon his experiences there, he wrote his debut middle-grade novel, Words in the Dust, which won the Christopher Medal and was chosen for Al Roker's Book Club for Kids on the Today show. His novels Stealing Air, If You're Reading This, and the Divided We Fall trilogy were Junior Library Guild selections. His seventh novel, Gamer Army, was published in late 2018. Trent also writes a weekly military life column for the Washington Examiner. He lives with his family outside Spokane, Washington.