The Bridge of Deaths by M.C.V. Egan presents a lot of challenges to me as a reviewer. On one hand I enjoyed the plot and and greatly admire Egan's passionate interest in the piece, but on the other I feel the author's inexperience as a fiction writer is all too evident.
Don't make any assumptions from that comment, Egan is by no means a poor writer. Perhaps I am wrong but I just don't think she knew what kind of book she wanted to write. Were she to have cut the fabricated characters/content and presented the story as a strict nonfiction of either her journey or her grandfather's, I would have issued a much higher rating. Similarly if she had cut down the amount of factual information, lost footnotes, concentrated on one particular plot line, and shown more than she told, I would have enjoyed it more as fiction.
For me, combining copious amounts of both fictional and nonfictional content resulted in a disjointed, incohesive, unconvincing piece of literature. I really feel Egan has talent, but I am also convinced her work would be better received were she to format it to a particular classification of print.