New Historical Fiction Masterpiece

"A novel to live in, learn from, and feel bereft over when the last page is turned, Doerr's magnificently drawn story seems at once spacious and tightly composed." - Booklist (Starred Review)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr took 10 years to write and now that it is published the reviews overwhelmingly exclaim this as a book not to be missed. Be sure to place a hold on it today!

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. At age six, she goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. At age twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

"If a book's success can be measured by its ability to move readers and the number of memorable characters it has, Story Prize–winner Doerr's novel triumphs on both counts." - Publisher's Weekly

“[All the Light We Cannot See] has the physical and emotional heft of a masterpiece...the novel presents two characters so interesting and sympathetic that readers will keep turning the pages hoping for an impossibly happy ending...highly recommended for fans of Michael Ondaatje's similarly haunting The English Patient." - Library Journal