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Loading... The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon: A Novelby Norman G. Gautreau
None No current Talk conversations about this book.  kimkimkim | Dec 13, 2019 |  no reviews | add a review
A remembrance of love in a time of war. 92-year-old Henry Budge defies most of his family by escaping a rehab hospital to make his way to France for the ceremonies of the 70th observance of D-Day. Before he dies, he hopes to at last address a grief he has allowed to simmer for decades and to rekindle memories of élodie Bedier, the French Resistance fighter with whom he fell in love 70 years earlier, as a way of confronting his grief at losing her. During his return journey, he relives events of 1944: being wounded as he parachutes into Normandy; falling in love with élodie who nurses him back to health; fighting the Germans alongside her and her resistance companions; and finally abandoning the war to rescue a group of children from the Holocaust, choices that leave Henry at risk of a firing squad for desertion and élodie vulnerable to fatal condemnation from her compatriots. When he arrives back in France, Henry makes several shocking discoveries that shake the very foundations of the memories he's had of élodie all these years and he is left to wonder about the love he has had for élodie: what rests on true memory vs. what is based on countless imagined conversations over the decades? No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (5)
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Wikipedia in English
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Henry Budge is 92 years old and maneuvering with difficulty. He has some wonderful stories to tell and this one is about a love found and lost on the battlefields of France in 1944. It is a story that teaches us “The pleasure of love lasts only a moment; the grief of love lasts a lifetime.” The story also pays tribute to the courageous men and women of the Resistance and especially those who tried to save the children by transporting them over the Pyrenees.
There is humor, tongue-in-cheek dialog, heartbreak, fear, murder, mayhem and maybe a few too many references to the gibbous moon. There are honest and extraordinary descriptions of the Battle of the Bulge and other parachute jumps that went horribly wrong. There is a hard look at whether it is desertion to turn away from your orders to help others in great need. I found myself reaching for my tissues as tears flowed freely. When I finished the book in the evening I thought I had put it to rest but I found that I was thinking about it as I woke up and it is still with me.
Thank you NetGalley and Blank Slate Press for a copy. (