All the light we cannot see, by Anthony Doerr

Hailed as one of the best books of 2014, this novel, set primarily during World War II, doesn’t disappoint.  In Paris, Marie-Laure lives a quiet life with her father, a master locksmith at the Museum of Natural History, in the years leading up to the war.  She lost her sight at age six and her father fashions intricate models of the Paris streets and buildings in her neighborhood to teach her to navigate around them.  Meanwhile, Werner, who lives with his sister in an orphanage in a German mining town, is caught up unwillingly in the Hitler Youth where his amazing engineering skills, particular with radios, are discovered.  The book opens with the 1944 bombardment of Saint-Malo on the coast of France where sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure has ended up after the occupation of Paris and nineteen-year-old Werner has been sent to find the source of French Resistance radio transmissions from the area.  But before their lives intersect at the end of the novel, the author brings to life characters, major and minor, and the war on several fronts.  Having read his earlier short story collections, The shell collector, and Memory Wall, the episodic short chapters were reminiscent of his earlier works, as was his deep interest in science.  Enjoyable on all levels.  530 pp.