Fallen for France
This is the story of Tassa, an Arabian horse, and the people whose lives she braids together for one terrible moment during World War I. There is the boy Beddou, a Moroccan shepherd, who falls in love with the noble mare who appears unexpectedly in his life; Hassan, his charming scalawag of a supervisor, who gambles away the horse then steals her back; and Jean-Baptiste, a lumbering pied-noir (Algerian-born Frenchman) who thinks the horse is his. The war breaks out. Colonial troops, two-footed and four-footed, are mobilized and sent to Europe. On the eastern front, Estelle, an independent young Frenchwoman taking care of a disabled brother, enters Tassa’s magic circle. And Thomas, the English veterinarian, whose sense that he caused his sister’s death has curdled his life. Through the Battle of the Ardenne Forest and the German occupation that follows, the characters meet and drift apart, love one another or long for a love remote and unattainable. They show kindness, inhumanity, and a longing to live and grow. And always the pure animal innocence of a horse teaches and heals.
This is a beautiful novel, part War Horse and part A Farewell to Arms. The characters are richly developed, the scenes brought to life with cinematic detail. Letts, best known for her equestrian books, has lived in Morocco and France, and it shows. The reader will ache for each of the protagonists as happiness seems just to escape their grasp… or does it? What is happiness, after all? The author makes us think about many deep things in a book that I read compulsively. Highly recommended.
