Bookshop of the Broken Hearted

Fans of The Little Paris Bookshop and The Light Between Oceans will delight in this tender novel about love and forgiveness in 1960s Australia, in which a lonely farmer finds his life turned upside down by the arrival of a passionate librarian--a Holocaust survivor determined to leave Europe behind as she opens the first bookshop his town has ever seen.

It is 1968 in rural Australia and young Tom Hope is doing his best. In love with the land, but not much of a farmer, it''s when his wife becomes pregnant--though by another--that Tom finds true fulfilment in the role of a father. When inevitably his wife leaves, taking little Peter with her, Tom is heartbroken.

Enter Hannah Babel, quixotic small-town bookseller: the second Jewish person--and the most vivid woman--Tom has ever met. Hannah has opened the town''s first bookshop, filling its shelves with all the darkness and light of postwar Europe. Tom dares to believe they could make each other happy, but Hannah is a haunted woman. Twenty-four years ago she and her own little boy had arrived at Auschwitz.

About learning to make peace with evils both great and small, The Bookshop of the Broken Hearted is gorgeously written, gentle-spirited, and wise, sharing a hopeful story of unexpected love and second chances.