Gorgeous East A Novel [Paperback]

A sweeping tale of love and redemption, honor and war, Robert Girardi'sGorgeous Eastfollows three French Foreign legionnaires of very different backgrounds from the cliffs of Mont Saint-Michel to Istanbul's ancient alley ways, from raucous Parisian bars to the desolate Sahara.Gorgeous Easttakes us on an epic and unforgettable adventure with the wonderful John Smith, a lost Brooklynite they call the Handsome American Cowboy; Colonel de Noyer, the elder statesman slowly going mad; and Captain Pinard, whose past is so hideous he can't find love outside the Legion's walls. When a mission in the Sahara goes horribly wrong, one legionnaire must wage battle against a rogue terrorist group and rescue his brothers-in-arms. In this tremendous return to form, Girardi show cases his sheer love of language and lumi n ous sense of place to deliver a masterful novel of the hearts and minds of soldiers of fortune.

ROBERT GIRARDI is the author of four previous novels and one volume of novellas, all of which have been widely translated. He has written for film and television. His nonfiction pieces and reviews have been published inThe Washington Post, Washingtonian,The New Republic,The National ReviewandLandscape Architecture Magazine, among other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop and USC Film School, Girardi has received a James Michener Fellowship. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his three children.

The French foreign legion is the stuff of literary and Hollywood legend: an army of the desperate and depraved, who may redeem themselves through service to France--or die in some hellish place, outnumbered, outgunned, unknown, unmourned. Gorgeous East seems a homage to now-dated adventure yarns like Beau Geste, but Girardi, tongue gleefully in cheek, points out that the legion abides, and he sets three contemporary legionnaires down in the middle of what may be the world's least-known, four-decades-old warl,