All My Flowers

By: Tom Gauthier

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Set in 1916 France, All My Flowers tells the story of the bloodiest, longest, battle of the First World War, Verdun, as a fantasy, through the eyes of Élise Moreau and a tiny girl, silently scattering rose petals, each a remembrance of a life lost.
“I carried them through silence, so they might speak when I could not.”
The poignant words of the nurses, a French soldier, a German soldier, a family caught in the middle of the nightmare of war, and the children, always the children, tell the real story.
It stands on a threshold between memory and history.
I now imagine memory as a river, Élise thought, its waters fed by lived experience, by grief, and by ritual.
All My Flowers was written to challenge the reader to feel history. Facts without feelings are empty, devoid of our humanity.
This story seeks to blend them.
I am a believer in Memory being a continuum of life.
If we are never remembered, did we ever exist?