Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Nov 2013
272 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
When an American woman, Stella Bain, is found suffering from severe shell shock in an exclusive garden in London, surgeon August Bridge and his wife selflessly agree to take her in.
A gesture of goodwill turns into something more as Bridge quickly develops a clinical interest in his houseguest. Stella had been working as a nurse's aide near the front, but she can't remember anything prior to four months earlier when she was found wounded on a French battlefield.
In a narrative that takes us from London to America and back again, Shreve has created an engrossing and wrenching tale about love and the meaning of memory, set against the haunting backdrop of a war that destroyed an entire generation.
"Shreve's thoughtful, provocative, historical tale has modern resonance." - Publishers Weekly
"An exemplary addition to Shreve's already impressive oeuvre." - Kirkus
"The masses of Shreve fans will line up for this one, as will some Downton Abbey enthusiasts." - Library Journal
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts. Her approimately 20 novels include The Pilot's Wife, The Weight of
Water, Eden Close, Strange Fits of Passion, Where or When, and Resistance.
Anita Shreve began writing fiction while working as a high school teacher after graduating from Tufts University.
Although one of her first published stories, "Past the Island,
Drifting," was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1975, Shreve felt she couldn't
make a living as a fiction writer so she became a journalist. She traveled to
Africa and spent three years in Kenya, writing articles that appeared in
magazines such as Quest, US, and Newsweek. Back in the United
States, she turned to raising her children and writing freelance articles for
magazines. Shreve later expanded two of these ...
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