Scented by chocolate and haunted by war, this compelling novel of dark miracles and angelic visitations offers up a distinctly imaginative tale.
Marie Claire is a young French Jew in a Nazi-occupied Belgian town, where she is cared for by her grandmother, who cultivates flowers. A shattering of glass, and Marie Claire's village is in rubble. Her grandmother is dead—everyone is dead. She flees to the root cellar of the house and waits.
Eventually she is rescued by two nuns working for the Resistance, who take her to their convent near a town where small miracles and strange visions are simply a part of life.
Download and start listening now!
“Kelby’s debut
novel is a luminous, harrowing tale of wartime horrors and miracles…Striking,
clear images give the novel a surreal cast…Such flashes of sensual detail are
made even more poignant when contrasted with the atrocities of the war, and
Kelby’s spare, elliptical prose effectively brings these moments to light,
infusing the emotionally and spiritually loaded subject matter with an uncommon
intimacy. Saints and Nazis may make strange bedfellows, but Kelby rises to the
challenge with considerable command in a haunting debut that erodes the
distinctions between waking and dreaming, faith and reason, life and death.”
—
Publishers Weekly (starred review)