Raddatz's 'Home' Going Hollywood?

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 6/27/2007 11:26:00 AM

Martha Raddatz's The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family has been optioned by Mike Medevoy/Phoenix Pictures. The Putnam book, which bowed in March, focuses on the 2004 ambush of American troops in the 1st Cavalry Division in Sadr City, Iraq, an ambush which left eight soldiers dead and more than 70 others wounded. The attack is generally credited as marking the beginning of the violent insurgency in post-invasion Iraq.

Raddatz, a correspondent for ABC News, follows the battle itself and the vigil kept by the soldiers' families--Casey Sheehan, the son of "anti-war mom" Cindy Sheehan, was among the soldiers who died--in the book, which was sold by Hotchkiss and Associates on behalf of the Gail Ross Literary Agency. Phoenix Pictures has been behind such book-to-film projects as Zodiac and Holes.