The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon

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.

When he arrives back in France, Henry and Élodie are shocked to learn the other is alive. Not only, that, but Élodie has organized the surviving children (who are now in their 70s and 80s) into an annual tribute dinner in memory of Henry. By comparing recollections, Henry and Élodie discover that in 1944 one of Élodie’s resistance companions, jealous of her love for Henry, lied to each of them about the other’s death. Now they are left to wonder about their love for each other. What rests on true memory vs. what is based on countless imagined conversations over the decades? How have they changed? Can their love be rejuvenated in some form, or have they changed too much? 

Norman G. Gautreau of Wakefield, MA

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A native New Englander with a life-long love of the sea, Norman’s first novel, Sea Room, won the prestigious Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction in 2003, was an “All-City-Reads” choice in several cities, and was a BookSense® selection. He has since written several more critically acclaimed, prize-winning novels.

An avid reader, poet, sailor, runner and cyclist, Norman lives outside Boston with his wife Susan and three cats.