*Starred review: "An engrossing saga of love set against a subtly drawn, disturbing depiction of Hitler's tyranny... Taylor's sprawling narrative is a coming-of-age story with the highest possible stakes, a tense wartime thriller, a study of faith in extremis... and an unusually intimate portrait of life in Germany as Nazism corrupts friendships and families" - Kirkus"An immersive tale of enduring love between a British woman and a German Catholic seminarian on the eve of WWII... WWII fiction fans will be riveted" - Publishers WeeklyIn the last golden years before Europe erupts intoWWII a young English writer and a German Roman Catholic priest-in-training meetby chance on the small British island of Guernsey - and are drawn into aforbidden, all-consuming love. Then history and duty intrude, forcing them tochoose between complicity and courage in a fight for truth, freedom - and eachother. A sweeping and devastating, morally complex love story that will stay with you longafter the last page, from Catherine Taylor, author of no. 1 best seller BeyondThe Moon.In 1936 Kitty Garland-Fry moves to Guernsey withher bohemian, artist parents and unruly siblings. Marooned amid her family'schaotic lifestyle, Kitty, a passionate writer of fairy tales, fears she'll dieof boredom and frustration if she cannot find a life of her own. In NaziBerlin, meanwhile, Lukas von Harnitz, an idealistic and devout Roman Catholicseminarian, is reluctantly leaving for Guernsey, too, forced to interrupt hispriestly studies for a year to take his newly widowed English-born mother backhome to safety. Fiercely anti-Nazi, he can't help feeling that he's abandoningboth his country and his calling at a moment of gathering darkness.Two fish out of water together, Kitty and Lukas aredrawn together in their shared loneliness. Bonding over poetry and books, theirdays unfold like a quiet, sunlit dream on white sand beaches beneath endlessblue skies, sheltered from both the pull of responsibility and the gatheringstorm of war. But then friendship begins to deepen into something more, andLukas is forced into a devastating choice between God and the woman he loves,while fate also forces Kitty onto a new path that will take her into the veryheart of Nazi Germany. As the world fractures around them and Lukas witnessesthe shameful, real-life historical collusion of the Church he loves withNazism, he's forced to reevaluate all he once believed sacred, while at thesame time Kitty, trying to fashion a future for herself built on compromise andhope, discovers that conscience will not be silenced. And as the consequencesof their choices finally come due, both Kitty and Lukas must decide who, andwhat, they truly believe in - and what they are willing to lose.Charting the road to war from both the British andGerman perspectives, The Many Seas to Guernsey is an emotional,character-driven epic that grapples with themes of faith, conscience, moralcourage and the power of love in an age of extremes. Moving from the secludedturquoise coves of Guernsey to the towering Bavarian Alps, then to the Gestapocells of pre-war Berlin and finally the hellish beaches of the 1940 Dunkirkevacuation. The Many Seas to Guernsey is the first in a planned duology andwill appeal to fans of novels like All the Light We Cannot See, Crooked Cross, Suite Francaise and The Nightingale.
