The Woman Who Waited by Andrei Makine.

A very dreamy book; events and descriptions are misty and their reality is quite uncertain. A young Russian man is telling the story of his time in a tiny desolate village called Mirnoe where he meets a woman in her 40s who has been waiting for her beloved to return from the war for 30 years. The wonder of her faithfulness and goodness is the central theme of the novel. By the writer of Dreams of My Russian Summers. According to the book jacket, he divides his time between Paris and a village in southwestern France. I love to think the village is Les Arques , where his countryman the artist Zadkine lived. (See post on From Here, You Can't See Paris.)