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by Peter Behrens
A devastating novel of war, love, and escape from the award-winning author of The Law of Dreams and The O'Briens
During childhood summers on the sunstruck Isle of Wight in the years before the First World War, Billy is entranced by Karin, the elusive daughter of a German-Jewish industrialist. Reunited on a Frankfurt estate in that war's hungry aftermath, Karin and Billy become fascinated with tribal rituals found in the Wild West stories of Karl May, whose Winnetou tales are among the most popular books published in Germany. Coming of age in Frankfurt and Berlin, Karin and Billy share a passion for speed, jazz, and nightclubs. They also share a fantasy of escape - from darkening Germany, from history - to El Llano Estacado, the high plains of Texas and New Mexico, vividly reimagined in May's fiction.
Intriguing characters braid this intricate and harrowing story together, from golden Edwardian summers to London under Zeppelin attack, Ireland on the brink of its War of Independence, and Germany collapsing into the Hitler era. As a society loses its civic and moral bearings, a childhood friendship deepens into a love affair with extraordinarily high stakes. Brilliantly conceived and elegantly written, Carry Me is an epic for grown-ups, an unusual love story, and a lucid meditation on Europe's violent twentieth century.
"[Behrens] revitalizes the war epic, substituting grand panoramas with realistic settings and great acts of heroism with small yet powerful acts of compassion. " - Publishers Weekly
"Vividly imagined ... This ambitious novel provides a panoramic view of a continent and a microscopic view of two individuals hovering precariously between the two World Wars... Moving seamlessly back and forth between times and countries, Behrens paints a stunningly intimate portrait in wide, universal strokes." - Booklist
"There's no doubt about Behrens' talent, but the tragic romance at the novel's center doesn't equal the power of his sobering meditations on the fragility of human decency." - Kirkus
This information about Carry Me was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Peter Behrens's first novel, The Law of Dreams, won the Governor General's Literary Award, Canada's most prestigious book prize, and has been published in nine languages. The New York Times Book Review called his second novel, The O'Briens, "a major accomplishment." He is the author of two collections of short stories, Night Driving and Travelling Light. His stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many anthologies. Awards he has received include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University. A native of Montreal, he is currently a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
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