All the Broken Places

Ninety-one-year-old Gretel Fernsby lives a quiet, well-ordered life in London, a stark contrast to the deeply disturbing secrets she harbors from her past. As the daughter of a notorious commandant of a Nazi extermination camp, she fled Nazi Germany at age 12, suppressing the grim realities and her father's monstrous legacy for decades. Her carefully constructed existence is threatened when a new family moves into the apartment below. Despite her ingrained caution, Gretel finds herself drawn to their young son, Henry. However, a violent argument she witnesses between Henry's parents ignites dormant memories and forces Gretel to confront a haunting moral dilemma. The novel masterfully navigates between Gretel's girlhood in war-torn Germany and her present-day London, revealing a woman perpetually haunted by complicity and denial. Now, faced with a chance to save Henry from a dangerous home, Gretel must decide whether to finally reveal the truths she has spent a lifetime protecting, and in doing so, potentially find a path to atonement, whatever the personal cost.