Between Two Thieves

Set against the devastation of the Crimean War, this sweeping historical novel imagines the extraordinary woman who would become Florence Nightingale, and the two men whose fates become inexplicably bound to hers. Through their intertwined stories, Dehan crafts a meditation on what it costs to heal a wounded world. At the center stands Hector Dunoisse, a paralyzed titan now confined to his chair in a quiet village, watching the modern age arrive while haunted by memories of his younger self: a man who built hospitals, challenged empires, and loved with a fervor that nearly destroyed him. The narrative moves between the blood-soaked fields where Nightingale lights her lamp among the dying and the haunted stillness of Dunoisse's final years, building toward a confrontation with the question every humanitarian must face: whether saving others excuses the wreckage of one's own life. Dehan writes with a poet's precision about the brutality of war and the stubborn persistence of compassion, creating a novel that aches with both sorrow and hard-won wisdom.