I love this debut novel. It is the story of 92-year-old Emmett Conn, a Turkish-American living in Georgia in contemporary times. Early in the book, we learn that Conn was a Turkish soldier (then Ahmet Khan) in World War I and that he has been wounded in battle leaving him with little memory of the war or events before that.

His wife, a nurse who cared for him in the London hospital where he was treated, has died leaving Conn with two daughters—one he sees infrequently, and another who grudgingly cares for him in his old age.

Emmett suffers from intense dreams--triggered by a brain tumor surgery--that take him back to his war time with vivid and detailed clarity. Eventually he understands that these dreams are actually real memories revealing the fact that Emmett served as a gendarme leading the brutal and inhumane deportation of Armenians from Turkey to Syria, known as one of the most horrifying acts against humanity in recent history.

Shifting back and forth between his current life and his past, Emmett must confront the painful truth of what he has done. Central to these dreams is the presence of Araxie, a beautiful young Armenian woman whom Emmett falls deeply in love with and eventually tries to save. Though he acts as a stoic and resolute soldier carrying out his orders to transport Armenians, it is through his intense love for Araxie that he understands the inhumane events that are being carried out. Eventually as the line between his dreams and reality blur, Emmett embarks on a journey to find Araxie and to seek her forgiveness.

Mustian has crafted a masterpiece, both in eloquent prose and beautiful storytelling. The shifts between the dream-inspired war times and present are seamless. Emmett’s haunting struggle to protect Araxie, and then later to find her propel the story reminding us that human connection transcends all else. The reader is left with a vivid understanding of the Armenian genocide and a reminder of the unthinkable cruelty of war. In the Author’s Note, Mustian writes: "Remembering is living. Forgetting, as Ahmet Khan learns, has its costs. ... We want to know. Sometimes that knowledge is painful, or inconvenient, or even damning. But it is essential. It exposes us for what we have been, and can be." ~Wendee