A young nurse braves the combat zones of World War I to search for the truth about her lost brother in this eldritch, exquisite dark fantasy from Katherine Arden, author of the Winternight trilogy (The Girl in the Tower; The Bear and the Nightingale).
Laura Iven's return to her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917 after three years' service as a combat nurse in the Canadian army should mark the end of the war for her. She served with enough distinction to earn a Croix de Guerre from France, but a leg injury from a mortar shell ended her enlistment. Her homecoming brought her face to face with more tragedy when the explosion of a cargo ship in the harbor devastated the town "as if God had raised a giant burning boot and stamped," killing both of Laura's parents. Now a box containing the blood-stained personal effects of Freddie, Laura's younger brother and an army private, has arrived at the home where Laura is staying. Laura knows he must have died, but a mysterious postcard sewn into his jacket raises enough doubt that she reenlists, determined to go back to the front and find any clue to his fate.
Two months earlier, Freddie was on the run with a German soldier named Hans Winter after they became trapped in the same buried pillbox and helped each other escape. Winter is injured, and Freddie is desperate to keep him alive, even if it means treason. "If Freddie believed in one thing in this strange world, he believed in Laura," so he sets off for her previous post, unaware she has already returned to Canada.
The Iven siblings search for each other but, instead, find a mysterious fiddler whose music is rumored to capture its hearers and leave them mad, "always pining for" the music. His magic can erase the pain of war for a time--and for a price. In a world run mad with ghosts and death, the Ivens must help each other remember what is worth fighting for.
Readers will find Arden in top form. The setting has little in common with her Winternight series, and her main character's mount is a motorcycle rather than a magic horse, but her clear vision of a spectral otherworld overlaying this one and her down-to-earth, steel-spined heroine bring a similar spirit. This harrowing yet beautiful plunge into the horrors of war and the power of abiding love soars. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: In this haunting, exquisite wartime fairy tale, a Canadian combat nurse reenlists to search for her lost brother in the trenches of World War I.