Nick Dybek

Across a continent still reeling from World War I, a "ravishingly beautiful" (Paula McClain) story about a love affair between two Americans and the lie that changes everything.France, 1921--Tom, a young American orphaned in World War I, is helping comfort the grieving families who travel through Verdun, seeking answers about their loved ones. But nothing in his past--not his rough Chicago childhood nor his experiences driving ambulances across French battlefields--can prepare Tom for the arrival of Sarah Hagen. From the moment he meets her, a disarmingly magnetic woman looking for news of her missing husband, he knows he will help her in any way he can--even if that means crossing an unforgivable line. As their affair takes them across a fractured Europe careening toward World War 2, Tom and Sarah learn how love can be both a cure for--and a distraction from--the realities of a world turned upside down. But they can only hide from the truth for so long. When news of an amnesiac soldier in Bologna reaches Tom in Paris, he sets off as a journalist to uncover the story, only to find Sarah at the soldier's bedside, hopeful as ever. Both are surprised to encounter an Austrian journalist named Paul with his own interest in the amnesiac. As they confront the past, Tom's actions come back to haunt him, and each is forced to make a choice that will change their lives forever. A deeply transporting novel about love and identity, truth and consequences, The Verdun Affair is a page-turning and vividly imagined "literary romance... that] unravels a love triangle and its players' secrets" (Los Angeles Times).

THE VERDUN AFFAIR is a deeply moving and evocative novel about a passionate love affair and the tragedy of wartime, set during the tumultuous years of post-World War I Europe.

Cal lives with his parents on Loyalty Island. Each winter, Cal's father - a captain of the island's trawling fleet - sets sail for Alaska; and though Cal is still too young to join them, he is old enough to know that everything depends on the fate of those few boats, thousands of miles north.When the fleet's owner dies, not only is the town's livelihood threatened, but so too is Cal's family. With winter fast approaching, and the fleet on the brink of extinction, Cal starts to suspect that his parents both have secrets to hide. Plagued by doubt, his loyalties strained and his moral compass thrown wildly off course, Cal is forced to make a brave and terrible choice.

A "powerful first novel" about "loyalty and moral choice within a crumbling family" (The Boston Globe).Every fall, the men of Loyalty Island--like their fathers and grandfathers before them--still sail from the Olympic Peninsula up to the Bering Sea to spend the winter catching king crab. Their dangerous occupation keeps food on the table but constantly threatens to leave empty seats around it. To Cal, Alaska remains as mythical and mysterious as Treasure Island, and the stories his father returns with are as mesmerizing as those he once invented about Captain Flint before he turned pirate. But while Cal is too young to accompany his father, he is old enough to know that everything depends on the fate of those few boats thousands of miles to the north. He is also old enough to feel the tension between his parents over whether he will follow in his father's footsteps. And old enough to wonder about his mother's relationship with John Gaunt, owner of the fleet.Then Gaunt dies suddenly, leaving the business in the hands of his son, who seems intent on selling away the fishermen's livelihood. Soon Cal stumbles on evidence that his father may have taken extreme measures to salvage their way of life. As winter comes on, his suspicions deepening and his moral compass shattered, he is forced to make a terrible choice.