Anthony Doerr’s new novel is the story of two children: a blind French girl who flees Nazi-occupied Paris in 1940 to live with an eccentric great-uncle in the walled city of Saint-Malo, and a German boy whose talent for fixing radios earns him a spot at the National Political Institutes of Education, a training school for Hitler Youth.
Two brothers born in Calcutta during World War II share a close childhood but separate from one another as adults. Subhash, the older, quieter brother, moves to the US to study marine chemistry. Udayan, the younger and more volatile, stays in India and becomes active in the Naxalite Communist movement. The circumstances that draw them apart and eventually bring their families together form the drama of Jhumpa Lahiri’s second novel.
On July 4, 2005, the Frankel family descends upon their summer home in the Berkshires for a memorial to Leo, the youngest Frankel sibling, who was killed while on assignment in Iraq a year before. Over the course of three days, the Frankels will contend with sibling rivalries and marital feuds, volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, the true meaning of family.
