The Secret of Raven Point Hardcover - 2014

From the award-winning writer of Easter Island (hailed by People magazine as a âÈêrich and worldly first novelâÈë), 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 heâÈçs 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 brotherâÈçs fateâÈ'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 BarnabyâÈçs psychic wound before the authorities take him away and any clues as to her brotherâÈçs fate are forever lost. Plunged into the horrifying depths of one manâÈçs 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 BarkerâÈçs 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 girlâÈçs 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.

Details

• Title The Secret of Raven Point
• Author Jennifer Vanderbes
• Binding Hardcover
• Edition First Edition
• Pages 306
• Volumes 1
• Language ENG
• Publisher Scribner Book Company, NY
• Date 2014-02-04
• ISBN 9781439167007 / 1439167001
• Weight 1.05 lbs (0.48 kg)
• Dimensions 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 in (23.11 x 15.24 x 3.30 cm)
• Library of Congress subjects Brothers and sisters, Historical fiction
• Dewey Decimal Code FIC

âÈêJennifer Vanderbes' The Secret of Raven Point should do for war-era Italy what Hilary Mantel has done for 1500's England. That is, it proves that fiction can be history with blood in its veins, quickening for us the violence and sadness and the awful incongruity of war. A brilliant novelist, and a book to treasure and never to forget.âÈë