Finding Gilbert

Book excerpt: How do the unfulfilled dreams and promises of our parents shape our lives and our destinies? During the Normandy Invasion in 1944, an American lieutenant took a French orphan boy Gilbert under his wing, making sure the boy had enough to eat and giving him attention and love. As the months passed and their bond deepened, he tried unsuccessfully to adopt the boy and bring him home to America. Years later, the soldier's daughter grew up hearing her father's stories about his time in France and about the orphan Gilbert. During her childhood, the boy felt like an invisible brother, hovering in her consciousness, slightly out of focus. Fifty years after the war and two years after her father's death, she found herself compelled to write about how his stories of his time in France had influenced her life. As she journeyed to France to retrace her father's footsteps, would she be able to complete what he had left unfinished? Could she find his orphan and tell him that her father had never forgotten him? In this true story about the power of love and kindness, Covington-Carter weaves a tale that spans seven decades, beginning and ending on the shores of Normandy. In it, she discovers the role that forgotten dreams play in guiding us towards our destinies. This book is a testament to the importance of a father's love and how a caring father can change lives in ways that ripple down through the generations.