From the award-winning writer of Easter Island, hailed by People magazine as a "rich and worldly first novel," comes a powerful story of love, loss, and redemption amidst the ruins of war-torn Italy.
1943. When seventeen-year-old Juliet Dufresne receives a cryptic letter from her enlisted older brother pleading for help and then finds out he's been reported missing overseas, she lies about her age and volunteers as an army nurse to find him.
Shy and awkward, Juliet is thrust into the bloody chaos of a field hospital, living in a sprawling encampment north of Rome where she forges new friendships with her fellow nurses and is increasingly consumed by the plight of her patients. One in particular, Christopher Barnaby, a deserter awaiting court martial, may hold the answer to her brother's fate—but the trauma of war has left him unable to speak. Racing against the clock, Juliet works with an enigmatic young psychiatrist, Henry Willard, to heal Barnaby's psychic wound before the authorities take him away and any clues as to her brother's fate are forever lost. Plunged into the horrifying depths of one man's combat memories, Juliet and Willard are forced to plumb the moral nuances of a so-called just war and to face the dangers of their own deepening connection.
Reminiscent of Pat Barker's Regeneration, The Secret of Raven Point is a war saga capturing the experiences of soldiers after the battles have ended. And as few novels have done, it depicts the ravages of war through the eyes of a young woman.
In luminous prose, Vanderbes tells the story of one girl's fierce determination to find her brother as she comes of age in a time of unrelenting violence. The Secret of Raven Point is historical fiction at its best, haunting, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting.
Download and start listening now!
“The time, 1943; the place, an
Italian field hospital at the front; the characters, unforgettable as performed
by Susie Berneis. She narrates this story of loss and healing with passion and
poise. Juliet Dufresne, a seventeen-year-old American nurse, searches for her
missing brother, Tucker, while treating patients wounded and traumatized by
war. Dr. Henry Willard, a psychiatrist, studies those hurt and battle fatigued,
particularly Christopher Branaby (who served with Tucker) as he seeks to heal
them. Berneis performs this complex story with inflected tones that match the
emotions of each scene. Accents range from soft Southern vowels to hard New
England cadences, each perfectly matched to the character. Berneis never misses
a shift in action, drawing the listener inexorably into the story. Winner of an
AudioFile Earphones Award.”
—
AudioFile