He described it as a
"ghostly, imperious walled city in Brittany, surrounded by emerald green sea on all four sides...I was walking through a city plucked from the imagination of Italo Calvino, a place that was part fairy-tale castle, part M.C. Escher drawing, part mist and ocean wind and lamplight....and you think: this city has survived for well over a thousand years. But Saint-Malo was almost entirely destroyed by American artillery in 1944, in the final months of World War II, and was painstakingly put back together, block by granite block, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. That a place could so thoroughly hide its own incineration, and that my own country was responsible for that incineration, fascinated me."
The author longed to tell a war story that felt new. The book took 10 years to write. We will discuss this book on December 10th, in the Community Room at the Clarkston Independence District Library. We meet from 10 AM to 11:30 AM.