[3] The plot of Soldiers' Pay revolves around the return of a wounded aviator home to a small town in Georgia following the conclusion of the First World War.

The aviator himself suffered a horrendous head injury, and is left in a state of almost perpetual silence, as well as blindness.

Several conflicts revolving around his return include the state of his engagement to his fiancée, the desire of the widow to break the engagement in order to marry the dying aviator herself, and the romantic intrigue surrounding the fiancée who had been less than faithful to the aviator in his absence.

William Faulkner was a friend of American writer Sherwood Anderson and a member of his literary circle in 1920s New Orleans.

[7] By the standards of the day, Soldiers' Pay and Faulkner's second novel Mosquitoes were commercial failures.