Book Review: The Gendarme

The Gendarme by Mark Mustian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Gendarme is the story of 92 year old World War I veteran Emmett Conn. He has few memories of the war due to memory loss caused by a war injury. After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, he remembers the war in his dreams and is haunted by these memories. Emmett dreams he's a gendarme, escorting Armenians from Turkey during the Armenian Genocide. During this trek, he meets the love of his life an Armenian girl named Araxie. After remembering her in his dreams, Emmett decides he must track her down to ask her forgiveness.

I knew very little about this period in history and learned a lot about it from this book and I would like to learn even more. I thought the author did a great job of making the reader feel what an elderly man in the last stages of his life might feel like – confused, regretful, detached, etc. At the same time, the younger version of Emmett Conn(Ahmet Khan)has a totally different voice – naive, headstrong, stubborn. Both story lines were compelling – it was hard to put this book down.

This book is published by Amy Einhorn Books so it's part of the Amy Einhorn Books Perpetual Challenge. You find out more about the challenge and sign up here.

(I received this book courtesy of the publisher.)