by Pat Barker
First published 2016
In the blacked-out streets of Blitz-torn London, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races to salvage the wounded. Alongside her is former friend Kit Neville, while her husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. Once art students, their dreams were shattered by the Great War. Now they find themselves in the midst of another deadly conflict, forced to confront old passions and impossible choices as death rains from the skies. Into their lives comes the enigmatic medium Bertha Mason, whose eerie ability to commune with the dead gains new urgency amidst the carnage. As Elinor, Paul, and Kit are drawn into Bertha's unsettling world, their fates become inextricably intertwined in this powerful portrait of a city under siege.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: London (England)
Period: Bombardment, 1940-1941
320 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday
Content warnings: death, war