RATING: GOOD
SPOILERS!!
This is a novel that alternates between present time and 1941.
Rozenn is a French expat living in England, who dies, and her granddaughter, Morane, who used to be close to her, does not understand why her grandmother has left her Cornish cottage to her sister, Gwen. Morane has had problems recently. After a riding accident when a cyclist startled her horse, making her fall and hit a child, killing him. That depressed her, and for months she felt unable to function, and then she discovered that her boyfriend and business partner, Nick, had a gambling problem and emptied their common bank account.
Now Morane lives in a shared flat and is trying to revive her business. Morane is a surveyor. Then while staying at the cottage, she discovers some unfinished letters from her grandmother. Rozenn had never talked about the war, and now Morane discovers that she stayed in a village in Britanny before she came to England.
The book seesaws between Morane and Rozenn, and we discover that Rozenn had a brother, who had been a prisoner of war but had been allowed to go home to revover from an appendectomy. Yet, their father feared when Yann had to return. Rozenn also had a twin sister, Claire, who had some mental problems when at birth she suffered some damage. Their father decide to take the family to Britanny, and there Yann will disappear. They move there, and the house is not very welcoming. Rozenn is unhappy, and she is not very nice to Claire.
They pretend that Yann is returning to Paris, but he actually stays behind, and the plan is to try to get him to England. Rozenn meets Luc, who will be her husband, and she decides to trust him, asking him for help. At first, Luc refuses to talk, but he eventually says that there are a couple of English soldiers who need help as one is wounded. Her father goes to patch him up, and they ask Rozenn to retrieve a radio that is hidden in some rocks. Her father doesn't want her to do it, but as it is the only way, she does it.
Then the night that Yann is to go, things go wrong. When he is about to get on the boat, the Germans appear, and Claire had also sneaked out of the house. Rozenn tells Claire to run and make the Germans notice her. That makes Yann go after her. Claire is found by one of the girls in town, who takes her to Madame O'Donnell, an Irish girl. Rozenn and Luc find themselves on the boat, and as there is danger that the Germans may catch them, they are the ones to travel to England, where they start their new life.
Morane travels to Britanny and there are people who know about the things that happened back then. She learns that her grandmother had a brother and a sister. Claire died of diphteria fter the war, but nobody knows what happened to Yann. Some think that he was a traitor, and he was the one to tell the Germans about the flit, which Morane thinks does not make sense. And she also discovers that her grandparents were arrested and were in a war camp, but they were bombed and died.
Morane she to the notaries when she tries to discover who owns the hosue where her grandmother lived for just a bit, and she discovers that the house belonged to Yann, who made his life in America as a comic painter, John Gardiner. He was very famous, and now he is dead, and the house belongs to Morane. In the house there is a letter in graphic strips telling her about the story, and how he returned to Britanny to discover that Claire and his parents were dead, and he found out where Rozenn was but he blamed her for what happened. Then just some years ago he wrote to her, and they talked on the phone and they discovered that both of them suspected and knew that it was Luc who had told the Germans about the flit to save his own brother that was in prison. Rozenn and Yann agreed that the house in Cornwall should go to one granddaughter and the one in Britanny to another.
I liked the book, but I found the part about Yann hiding in plain sight and leaving difficult to believe.
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