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Route 80 closed eastbound in areas between Columbia and Luzerne counties. Local traffic light for Sunday commutes.

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Late TD give Coughlin win over Wyoming Area

<p>It is no surprise that Anthony Doerr&#8217;s novel, &#8220;All the Light We Cannot See,&#8221; won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, both in 2015. It is rare to find such a beautifully written, compelling page turner. Often longer books &#8212; this one clocks in at 531 pages &#8212; run out of steam at some point, but Doerr&#8217;s books keep the reader engaged from beginning to end.</p><p>&#8220;All the Light We Cannot See&#8221; follows two parallel stories during World War II. Marie-Laure is a young blind girl who lives in Paris with her father, a locksmith for the Museum of Natural History. In Germany, Werner is an orphan facing a life working in the mines, but who dreams of a higher purpose. His natural talents with technology, particularly repairing radios earns him the attention of Nazi soldiers as Hitler&#8217;s party starts to rise in power.</p><p>Marie-Laure flees Paris with her father in 1940, heading to the home of someone connected with the museum. Unbeknownst to her, her father is smuggling a rare diamond, called the Sea of Flames out of Paris. Three copies of the diamond were made from the original. Her father, Daniel, knows not if he carries the original diamond or one of the copies, but it makes their journey that much more perilous.</p><p>When the home they were supposed to find shelter in was abandoned, they seek refuge with Marie-Laure&#8217;s agoraphobic and eccentric Uncle Etienne in the coastal town of Saint-Malo. Marie-Laure settles there, but not long after, her father is arrested and disappears. She learns how to navigate the town, using an elaborate model her father built for her. Eventually, she becomes a part of the French resistance, along with her uncle and housekeeper.</p><p>Meanwhile, in Germany, Werner attends a school for young men, training to be a Nazi soldier. There, he works building transistors that pinpoint locations of traitors in German occupied territory. There he observes the brutal elements of the Nazi party and slowly begins to question what he is doing.</p><p>Werner is discharged from school early, and sent with a team into Russia and eventually other countries where he is in charge of triangulating the location of occupied citizens who are using radios to organize resistance against Nazis. Over time, this task leads him to Saint-Malo and on a trajectory with Marie-Laure in 1944, after D-Day when American soldiers were fighting to free the last of France.</p><p>At the same time, a sinister Nazi soldier is hunting for the priceless diamond, which is said to bring its owner immortality. He, too, is closing in on Saint-Malo and Marie-Laure.</p><p>The war itself is touched on only tangentially. Any cursory knowledge of WWII allows the reader to know what is happening while the children are growing up. Werner tries to focus on the technical side of his job. &#8220;It&#8217;s just math,&#8221; he tells himself frequently, until an accidental death of a civilian traumatizes him and brings the war into sharp focus. Previously, Werner keeps himself and his work vague. We know he is tracking Nazi resistors, but he has emotionally removed himself from the scene, until he can&#8217;t avoid what he is doing anymore.</p><p>&#8220;All the Light We Cannot See&#8221; is masterfully suspenseful. The book jumps back and forth between August, 1944, when the three main characters are all in Saint-Malo, and the years between 1940 and 1944, when Werner and Marie-Laure are growing up. The chapters are short and brisk, making it hard to put the book down. Those 531 pages, which seemed to stretch endlessly before me when I started the book, quickly melted away.</p><p>Are there cliches in the book? The Nazi treasure hunter? The soldier doubting his calling? Sure, but Doerr twists the cliches in unexpected ways. Daniel made intricate puzzle boxes for her to solve. This book is like one of those puzzles: challenging but extremely fun to read; one most worthy of the awards it earned and one that would fit into any reader&#8217;s collection perfectly.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">&#8216;All The Light We Can Not See&#8217; was 2015&#8217;s winner for fiction writing. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/web1_Light.jpg</photo1><caption1>&#8216;All The Light We Can Not See&#8217; was 2015&#8217;s winner for fiction writing. </caption1><photoCredit1>Submitted photo </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Dorothy Sasso</p><p>On the Books</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>&#8220;All the Light We Cannot See&#8221;</p><p>Author: Anthony Doerr</p><p>Page Count: 531</p><p>Publisher: Scribner</p><p>Rating: &#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;&#9830;</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Dorothy Sasso is a former Soap Opera Digest writer and a private school teacher. She is busy reading books and raising her daughter.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

‘All the Light We Can Not See’ is a must-read page turner and recipient of a Pulitzer Prize