What I’m Reading: All the Light We Cannot See

My suspicion is that Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, thought of Saint Malo first. Saint Malo is a walled city on a promontory along the French coast, jutting out into the English channel, and known as the “jewel of the Normandy coast.” In 1944, it was the last German-held city in Normandy to surrender to the Allies, and as a result, it was the victim of an extensive bombing campaign that destroyed nearly all of the city’s historic buildings. Much of the novel’s action takes...