The Verdun Affair
By Nick Dybek
Read by Jacques Roy
Table of Contents
About The Book
Across a continent still reeling from World War I, a “ravishingly beautiful” (Paula McClain) story about a love affair between two Americans and the lie that changes everything.
France, 1921—Tom, a young American orphaned in World War I, is working at an ossuary in Verdun, helping priests comfort families seeking answers about their loved ones. But nothing in his past—not his rough-and-tumble Chicago childhood nor his experiences driving ambulances across French battlefields—can prepare Tom for the arrival of Sarah Hagen. From the moment he sees her, a young woman in a blue dress desperate for news of her missing husband, he knows he will help her in any way he can.
As their affair takes them across a fractured Europe, Tom and Sarah reckon with the ways extraordinary circumstances impact the lives of ordinary people. They eventually part but when news of an amnesiac soldier in Naples reaches Tom in Paris, he sets off, only to find Sarah there, hopeful as ever, along with an Austrian journalist named Paul who has his own agenda. Years later, a chance encounter with Paul forces Tom, now a screenwriter in Hollywood, to confront his past—and the woman he’s never been able to forget.
A page-turning, vividly imagined, and deeply romantic novel about love and identity, truth and consequences, The Verdun Affair is a “literary romance…[that] unravels a love triangle and its players’ secrets” (Los Angeles Times). It will transport you to another place and time while asking the question: Who are you in a world you no longer recognize?
France, 1921—Tom, a young American orphaned in World War I, is working at an ossuary in Verdun, helping priests comfort families seeking answers about their loved ones. But nothing in his past—not his rough-and-tumble Chicago childhood nor his experiences driving ambulances across French battlefields—can prepare Tom for the arrival of Sarah Hagen. From the moment he sees her, a young woman in a blue dress desperate for news of her missing husband, he knows he will help her in any way he can.
As their affair takes them across a fractured Europe, Tom and Sarah reckon with the ways extraordinary circumstances impact the lives of ordinary people. They eventually part but when news of an amnesiac soldier in Naples reaches Tom in Paris, he sets off, only to find Sarah there, hopeful as ever, along with an Austrian journalist named Paul who has his own agenda. Years later, a chance encounter with Paul forces Tom, now a screenwriter in Hollywood, to confront his past—and the woman he’s never been able to forget.
A page-turning, vividly imagined, and deeply romantic novel about love and identity, truth and consequences, The Verdun Affair is a “literary romance…[that] unravels a love triangle and its players’ secrets” (Los Angeles Times). It will transport you to another place and time while asking the question: Who are you in a world you no longer recognize?
Reading Group Guide
This reading group guide for The Verdun Affair includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
France, 1921—Tom, a young American orphaned in World War I, is helping comfort the grieving families who travel through Verdun, seeking answers about their loved ones. But nothing in his past—not his rough Chicago childhood nor his experiences driving ambulances across French battlefields—can prepare Tom for the arrival of Sarah Hagen.
From the moment he meets her, a disarmingly magnetic woman looking for news of her missing husband, he knows he will help her in any way he can—even if that means crossing an unforgivable line. As their affair takes them across a fractured Europe careening toward World War 2, Tom and Sarah learn how love can be both a cure for—and a distraction from—the realities of a world turned upside down. But they can only hide from the truth for so long.
When news of an amnesiac soldier in Bologna reaches Tom in Paris, he sets off as a journalist to uncover the story, only to find Sarah at the soldier’s bedside, hopeful as ever. Both are surprised to encounter an Austrian journalist named Paul with his own interest in the amnesiac. As they confront the past, Tom’s actions come back to haunt him, and each is forced to make a choice that will change their lives forever.
A deeply transporting novel about love and identity, truth and consequences, The Verdun Affair is a page-turning and vividly imagined literary romance.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. At the beginning of the novel, Tom is working in an ossuary in Verdun, sorting bones. How does this impact his understanding of the war? How does it affect his feelings toward the women he meets, searching for their husbands and sons?
2. When Tom first meets Sarah, she’s just caught a koi fish from the church’s pond in her purse. How does this set the tone for their relationship?
3. Why do you think Tom tells Sarah that he met Lee Hagen?
4. One day, collecting bones, Tom imagines the war experience of a man named Martin, whose mother once came to the ossuary to ask Father Perrin if her son, then dead, had ever received her letter. Tom imagines Martin’s childhood, swimming in the village lake; his adulthood as a stone mason; and then his time as a soldier, finally deciding that it “couldn’t be” (p. 36) that this man he imagined had died—that he must have been taken prisoner instead. What might be the purpose of Tom’s thought experiment?
5. Tom, reflecting on his experiences in World War I, quotes a famous line from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: “Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers. Finally, only the names of places had dignity.” Why would these words (p. 41) resonate with Tom?
6. When Tom and Sarah visit a medium together, the woman conjures up a spirit—but not the one that they’re looking for. How do the themes of miraculous connection and false hope play out further in the narrative?
7. Before Tom, Sarah, and Paul meet Douglas Fairbanks, Tom hears of another famous soldier-turned-amnesiac, a man called Anthelme Mangin. The publisher of the newspaper where Tom works writes that this man rejects his identity because “in the age of industrial war, an identity can be stolen on the whims of strangers and at a moment’s notice” (p. 120). Do you agree or disagree, and why?
8. Why do so many mothers wait to see Douglas Fairbanks, knowing that he is almost certainly not their son?
9. Sarah believes men prefer a frightened woman. Paul believes men prefer a happy woman. Dr. Bianchi believes that women don’t have the freedom to express illness. How have women’s roles shifted since the 1921 portrayed in The Verdun Affair, and how have they stayed the same?
10. When Tom and Sarah travel together, they call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Tom Morrow. Do you see irony in this choice, or is it an expression of optimism?
11. In Los Angeles in the 1950s, why doesn’t Tom want “his” song to be written into a movie?
12. In a world where everyone is grieving, why do Paul and Sarah hold on to the specific hope of finding a single man—respectively, the man that wronged Paul and the man that Sarah married? What’s the relationship between forgiveness and vengeance in this novel?
13. After the riot in Bologna, Tom and Sarah find a group of boys whipping a cadaver with their belts (p. 257). What symbolic value does this action have?
14. The song Tom hears a soldier sing in Aix-les-Bains—the song he tells Sarah that Lee Hagen sang—ends with, “the perfect end to a perfect year.” How do the lyrics reflect the situation in Europe in 1921, as well as the three main characters’ experiences?
15. What do you make of Dr. Bianchi’s final treatment with Douglas Fairbanks? Why are Paul, Sarah, and Tom willing to see Douglas Fairbanks suffer?
16. At the very end of The Verdun Affair, with the glimmer of a new life before him, Tom remembers what it was like to drive an ambulance in combat during World War I (p. 291). Can you imagine why that image might come to him at that time?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Further research World War I by reading one of the books the author mentions inhis acknowledgments, such as A World Undone by G. J. Meyer or The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne.
2. Check out Nick Dybek’s first novel, When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man.
Introduction
France, 1921—Tom, a young American orphaned in World War I, is helping comfort the grieving families who travel through Verdun, seeking answers about their loved ones. But nothing in his past—not his rough Chicago childhood nor his experiences driving ambulances across French battlefields—can prepare Tom for the arrival of Sarah Hagen.
From the moment he meets her, a disarmingly magnetic woman looking for news of her missing husband, he knows he will help her in any way he can—even if that means crossing an unforgivable line. As their affair takes them across a fractured Europe careening toward World War 2, Tom and Sarah learn how love can be both a cure for—and a distraction from—the realities of a world turned upside down. But they can only hide from the truth for so long.
When news of an amnesiac soldier in Bologna reaches Tom in Paris, he sets off as a journalist to uncover the story, only to find Sarah at the soldier’s bedside, hopeful as ever. Both are surprised to encounter an Austrian journalist named Paul with his own interest in the amnesiac. As they confront the past, Tom’s actions come back to haunt him, and each is forced to make a choice that will change their lives forever.
A deeply transporting novel about love and identity, truth and consequences, The Verdun Affair is a page-turning and vividly imagined literary romance.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. At the beginning of the novel, Tom is working in an ossuary in Verdun, sorting bones. How does this impact his understanding of the war? How does it affect his feelings toward the women he meets, searching for their husbands and sons?
2. When Tom first meets Sarah, she’s just caught a koi fish from the church’s pond in her purse. How does this set the tone for their relationship?
3. Why do you think Tom tells Sarah that he met Lee Hagen?
4. One day, collecting bones, Tom imagines the war experience of a man named Martin, whose mother once came to the ossuary to ask Father Perrin if her son, then dead, had ever received her letter. Tom imagines Martin’s childhood, swimming in the village lake; his adulthood as a stone mason; and then his time as a soldier, finally deciding that it “couldn’t be” (p. 36) that this man he imagined had died—that he must have been taken prisoner instead. What might be the purpose of Tom’s thought experiment?
5. Tom, reflecting on his experiences in World War I, quotes a famous line from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms: “Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers. Finally, only the names of places had dignity.” Why would these words (p. 41) resonate with Tom?
6. When Tom and Sarah visit a medium together, the woman conjures up a spirit—but not the one that they’re looking for. How do the themes of miraculous connection and false hope play out further in the narrative?
7. Before Tom, Sarah, and Paul meet Douglas Fairbanks, Tom hears of another famous soldier-turned-amnesiac, a man called Anthelme Mangin. The publisher of the newspaper where Tom works writes that this man rejects his identity because “in the age of industrial war, an identity can be stolen on the whims of strangers and at a moment’s notice” (p. 120). Do you agree or disagree, and why?
8. Why do so many mothers wait to see Douglas Fairbanks, knowing that he is almost certainly not their son?
9. Sarah believes men prefer a frightened woman. Paul believes men prefer a happy woman. Dr. Bianchi believes that women don’t have the freedom to express illness. How have women’s roles shifted since the 1921 portrayed in The Verdun Affair, and how have they stayed the same?
10. When Tom and Sarah travel together, they call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Tom Morrow. Do you see irony in this choice, or is it an expression of optimism?
11. In Los Angeles in the 1950s, why doesn’t Tom want “his” song to be written into a movie?
12. In a world where everyone is grieving, why do Paul and Sarah hold on to the specific hope of finding a single man—respectively, the man that wronged Paul and the man that Sarah married? What’s the relationship between forgiveness and vengeance in this novel?
13. After the riot in Bologna, Tom and Sarah find a group of boys whipping a cadaver with their belts (p. 257). What symbolic value does this action have?
14. The song Tom hears a soldier sing in Aix-les-Bains—the song he tells Sarah that Lee Hagen sang—ends with, “the perfect end to a perfect year.” How do the lyrics reflect the situation in Europe in 1921, as well as the three main characters’ experiences?
15. What do you make of Dr. Bianchi’s final treatment with Douglas Fairbanks? Why are Paul, Sarah, and Tom willing to see Douglas Fairbanks suffer?
16. At the very end of The Verdun Affair, with the glimmer of a new life before him, Tom remembers what it was like to drive an ambulance in combat during World War I (p. 291). Can you imagine why that image might come to him at that time?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Further research World War I by reading one of the books the author mentions inhis acknowledgments, such as A World Undone by G. J. Meyer or The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne.
2. Check out Nick Dybek’s first novel, When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man.
About The Author
Photograph by Melissa Blackall
Nick Dybek
Nick Dybek is a recipient of a Granta New Voices selection, a Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and a Maytag Fellowship. He received a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He teaches at Oregon State University. He is the author of When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man and The Verdun Affair.
About The Reader
Jacques Roy
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (June 12, 2018)
- Length: 320 pages
- Runtime: 8 hours and 49 minutes
- ISBN13: 9781508255017
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): The Verdun Affair Unabridged Audio Download 9781508255017
- Author Photo (jpg): Nick Dybek Photograph by Melissa Blackall(0.1 MB)
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