The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are. Today’s young people want to know everything about everyone. They think talking about a problem will solve it. I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.

Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.

I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.

Why was it so easy for men in the world to do as they wanted and so difficult for women?

“Have you heard of Edith Cavell?” she asked. “Do I strike you as an educated man?” She thought about that for a moment and then said, “Yes.” He was quiet long enough that she knew she’d surprised him. “I know who she is. She saved the lives of hundreds of Allied airmen in the Great War. She is famous for saying that ‘patriotism is not enough.’

At his kiss, something opened up inside the scraped, empty interior of her heart, unfurled. For the first time, her romantic novels made sense; she realized that the landscape of a woman’s soul could change as quickly as a world at war.