Guilt is a shadow that never fades.
At ninety-one, Gretel Fernsby has lived quietly for decades in her London apartment, her past buried beneath layers of routine and silence. She does not speak of her childhood flight from Nazi Germany or of the father whose name is synonymous with horror. Some memories are too dangerous to touch.
But when a young family moves in downstairs, Gretel’s bond with their son stirs ghosts she has spent a lifetime repressing. A violent encounter forces her to face the darkest truths about who she was and what she allowed to happen.
From the author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne’s All the Broken Places is a devastating and redemptive story of guilt, grief, and moral reckoning.
