I would highly recommend this beautifully written work of historical fiction that alternates between the stories of two children during WWII. The two main characters are Marie-Laure, a young blind French girl who flees occupied Paris with her father, a key master of the Natural Museum of History, and Werner, a German orphan whose tinkering with an old radio lends him technical skills that throw him headlong into a Hitler Youth group which leads him directly into the heart of the war.
The action moves in waves from Germany to France, from pre-war years to action in the midst of war to the end of fighting and back again. Doerr’s development of the two main characters continues even after the war ends and finally finishes in the present day with an underlying message of the innocence and humanity of these two young characters as their lives are sadly forced into a path that will someday have them meet as enemies. The book can help today’s youth to understand events and conditions in Europe during the Second World War, and the lives of individuals on each side of the conflict.