In the early 1930s in Paris, a very young Marie-Laure LeBlanc has lost
her sight and is slowly learning how to get about without it. In
Germany, orphan, Werner Pfennig is interested in radios and how they
work. He is unlike other boys his age who are more interested in being
soldiers in the new order. Werner and his sister, Jutta, secretly
listen to a radio that he has built learning about a larger world, while
Marie-Laure learns by touch, and sound in the museum where her father
works.
By late 1939 Parisians begin to live in fear of a German invasion. In
June of 1940, Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris ahead of the
advancing Germans. They end up in Saint Malo. Meantime, Werner is
taken from the orphanage and inducted into the Hitler Youth, his
instinctive knowledge taken advantage of. But due to losses on the
Russian front, Werner's age is advanced on paper by two years, and he
finds himself suddenly a soldier in the Wehrmacht. A soldier who knows
how to triangulate radio signals.
In August of 1944 the war comes to Saint Malo. Marie-Laure and her
great-uncle Etienne help the resistance by broadcasting a series of
numbers on a secret radio set he had built many years before. Werner is
also sent to Saint Malo, to search for a radio broadcasting on behalf
of the resistance.
Author Anthony Doerr has woven a tale that draws one deeply into.
Although the chapters are short and revert back and forth between the
two main characters, at no time does the story seem disjointed. I was
unable to put this book down. It was a very good read.
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