The Heart Mender – A BookSneeze Review

I will say that The Heart Mender by Andy Andrews was quite an interesting read. As a writer myself, I was attracted to the way Andy Andrews wrote this book. His use of foreshadowing flowed quite nicely, I thought. The switching from the “now” to the “then” wasn’t choppy, which I thought was really great. However, when I got to the end of the book, the story just ended. It felt to me like there were some things that remained untold. And maybe there were a few things. It was based on a true story, and one of the “real life” characters seemed uncomfortable with Andy sharing her and her husband’s story. I’ll explain why later. I was a bit disappointed that Andy included some profanity in the telling of the story.

The story begins as Andy finds some WWII paraphernalia while digging a root out of the ground on his property. After having done research, talking to older locals, and putting together all his evidence, Andy found the owner of the items left in an old can, buried in the sand. And from there, the story begins.

The owner of the WWII items was a German U-boat marine. After a difficult experience on the submarine, he was shot and washed ashore onto the beach, where a woman named “Helen” found him. I don’t want to tell the whole story, but Josef (the German) stayed with Helen for a while to recover, pretending to be a Brit. Only a handful of people ever ended up knowing that Josef was in fact a German on duty on a submarine. The worry of Josef being discovered as a German continually plagued Helen and Josef, even at the time of The Heart Mender’s publishing. They asked Andy Andrews to change the names in his story so that they could hold on to some anonymity, and to ease their concern for Josef’s safety, obviously.

The Heart Mender is a story of forgiveness. You’ll have to read to find out why. 😉 I thought it was a very lovely story, and it was definitely a touching story.