All The Light We Cannot See, Doerr - B +

                                               This novel was a National Book Award Finalist in 2014. It is a finely-drawn tale of two young people whose paths cross in St. Malo, France in August 1944.  St. Malo was a fortress city at the mouth of the Rance River that was bypassed by the Allies for two months. However, the Allies finally decided to bomb on August 7th.
                                               We first meet Werner a decade before in an orphanage in the Ruhr Valley where he discovers a skill for fixing radios.  His talents afford him the opportunity to avoid the mines, where his father died. He is sent to technical training school. Marie is the blind daughter of the chief locksmith of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Her father teaches her how to navigate the world by constructing miniatures of her environment and then escorting her from place to place until the real world is as familiar as the miniatures she has committed to  memory.  Werner is so skilled that at school he is able to plan, design and build a machine to triangulate radio waves and find illicit radio activity.  His superiors doctor his paperwork to call him up for Wehrmacht duty at sixteen. Marie's father is charged with protecting a very important diamond. The Director of the Museum has three redundant copies made and sends four of his direct reports off to different parts of the country to confuse the Germans, who assign a jeweler to track down the diamond which Marie's dad has secreted inside her miniature of St. Malo.  After the bombing, Werner escapes from a cellar where he has spent almost six days awaiting death.  Marie is on the sixth floor of her family's home in a hidden attic while the jeweler is trying to find her.
                                                This is a fine book, that is not too easy to read and very challenging to outline.  In the interest of those who will read it,  I have not detailed the consequence of Werner and Marie's meeting, nor the post-war epilogue.  Great books invest you in their characters and bring you to places and times you've never been to. This one adds a deft touch of human insight and emotion. It deserves all the attention it has received.