All the Light We Cannot See (extra book)

Happy New Year!  Finished the last book of the year and what a great one!  Anthony Doerr’s 2014 book called All the Light We Cannot See.   The author uses a technique I love, start with an ending passage, and then go back and forth in time.  He follows three characters’ lives with very short chapters, 2-3 pages or shorter.  The story moves quickly.  Enter World War II in Paris, France where the main character Marie-Laure, whom at the age of six, becomes blind, yet is able to understand her surroundings based on the miniature neighborhood her father builds for her to memorize.  She and her father are forced from Paris to relocate to her great uncle’s home in Saint-Melo, a coastal city where her father had grown-up.  Marie-Laure’s father works as the locksmith for the Museum of Natural History, where he is entrusted with a secret jewel which saves the life of the owner.  Simultaneously, in a mining town in Germany, is a similarly aged orphan young boy, Werner and his sister Jutta, who live in an orphanage.  Werner is a talented youth who immerses himself into radio technology.  This leads him to enter the prestigious Hitler Youth academy, where he is saved from being an infantry member, based on his ability to work transmitters.  The third story follows a dying German military leader who is dying of cancer and in search of the missing secret jewel.  This is a beautiful story of helplessness, selflessness, and survival, all within the framework of the Nazi’s desire to destroy the world.    I could not put this book down and finished it in two seatings.  Amazing story which will make you smile, cry, and realize even in the depths of utter destruction, there is at least one person who cares for justice.  A book I hope we use for book club for RAs next semester.