This book had been sitting on my nightstand for ages – probably nearly two years – before I finally started it. And the first chapter is like a gut punch, I won’t lie: brutal, set during the Korean War.  From there, it flowers into a kind of bloom of suffering at various levels, the kind of suffering that is compelling, and horrible and beautiful all at once. The two protagonists, Hector and June, couldn’t be more different, but are drawn together by war and by Sylvie Tanner, who had her own kind of blush-stain of suffering as well – the kind that isn’t satisfied to ruin just her life, but those around her as well.

Hector and June are both hardened – fate and situations have left them this way, and yet, years after the war when they are brought back together, there is that vague, blurry gentleness brought on by tragedy and the knowledge that they are the only ones who can truly understand each other.

This book pretty much has it all with triggering material: rape, death, drug abuse. But to just say that this book is about war, or love, or memory, or family (or the lack of it) sells this book far short. It’s about all of those things, as well as the desire to live, even when one isn’t sure what that means.