Jeanette Lynes

The Paper Birds (eBook, ePUB)

A Novel

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Imagine you have only a pencil and paper, a pocketful of hunches, and your puzzle-solving skills to help end the war

Fresh out of high school, Gemma Sullivan lands what she believes is an office job, only to learn that she's been hired for top-secret government codebreaking work in a cottage in Mimico, Ontario. The codebreaking Cottagerun by the brilliant, eccentric Miss Fearing, who was trained at England's Bletchley Parkpulls Gemma in with its urgent lure and mystery. But along with this comes an oath of lifelong secrecy.

Gem can't tell anyone about her job, not even her elderly Aunt Wren, who has raised her since the age of three after the tragic death of Gem's parents. Her aunt harbours a deep love for crossword puzzles and Tarot cards and an equally passionate hatred for war after the death of her own fiancé in World War I. The last thing she'd want for her niece is a job that involves anything to do with the war.

The codebreaking is intense, even mind-numbing at times. One day during her lunch break Gem goes for a walk and discovers a German POW camp not far from the cottage. At the barbed-wire fence, she encounters a prisoner named Toby. Even though she risks losing her job, or worse, if she's caught fraternizing with the enemy, Gem can't stop visiting him. After several weeks of risky conversations, Toby disappears from the camp.

While Gem grows into her engrossing job, she hadn't anticipated the tremendous mental strain it would cause, and she struggles with the burden of secrecy both at work and in her private life. As Gem is pulled deeper into wartime intelligence work, she becomes an integral part of the codebreakers' circle. The Cottage codebreaking unit is small but determined; her female coworkers all possess a range of complementary skills. But in order to be successful, they must learn to work together.

The Paper Birds is a WWII love story that reveals the struggles and sacrifices of everyday working women during the war and highlights the previously unknown codebreaking work undertaken by women in Canada during the war. This novel is both one woman's story, and many.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins Canada
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. Juni 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781443472821
• Artikelnr.: 72271524

Autorenporträt

JEANETTE LYNES is the author of the bestselling novel The Apothecary's Garden, a finalist for a High Plains Book Award and two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her second novel, The Small Things That End the World, won the 2019 Fiction Prize at the Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her first novel, The Factory Voice, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a ReLit Award. She has also written seven books of poetry. Her forthcoming non-fiction book Apron Apocalypse: Lyric Essays received the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award. A settler, Jeanette Lynes grew up on the traditional territory of the People of the Three Fires: the Ojibway, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations of Anishinabek peoples. Since 2011 she has directed the MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis. The Paper Birds is her fourth novel.