All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr

This delightful, insightful novel caught me by surprise. I wasn't expecting such beautiful writing or such human tenderness amid details of the brutality of war. The two central figures in this compelling tale are a French girl and a German boy-both intelligent, decent, thoughtful-whose lives begin in quite different circumstances and yet converge through the senseless imperatives of World War II.

Marie-Laure, congenitally blind since she was six years old, lives with her father who has charge of the thousands of locks at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Werner lives in an orphanage in industrial Germany, an orphanage designated to receive the orphans of the men killed in the coal mines of the region. Marie-Laure's life is disrupted by the Fall of Paris to the German forces.

She and her father flee Paris with perhaps the most valuable possession of the Museum entrusted to their care, a diamond of great beauty and value. They flee to the medieval sea-side town of St. Malo.

Werner's intelligence and scientific bent rescue him from the orphanage. He is sent to a science-oriented high school run by the Nazis, where he is subjected to planned brutal treatment designed mold the boys into brutal men. Drafted into the army he sees service on the Russian front, in Vienna, in France, ultimately in St. Malo. Through his army experiences he becomes convinced of the inhumanity of war.

A third character finds his way to St. Malo-Von Rumpel, a German officer riddled with cancer who patiently and mercilessly seeks, stalks the treasured diamond. Without giving away the details of  events in St. Malo, let me just say that Doerr manages the convergence of the three characters with a sure touch.
Doerr's writing is a special pleasure to read. It is expressive, nuanced, sensitive. I didn't want this novel to end.