The Warm Hands of Ghosts

Hardcover, 334 pages

English language

Published Feb. 13, 2024 by Del Rey.

ISBN:
9780593128251
5 stars (1 review)

During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after …

1 edition

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden

5 stars

It’s been just over 100 years since the end of World War I. The last veterans have passed away and World War II has largely eclipsed what was called the Great War in a lot of Western minds. Katherine Arden’s heartbreaking historical fantasy, The Warm Hands of Ghosts, brings the horrors of the catastrophic First World War back to life through the eyes of a nurse and her soldier brother. Both characters search for each other in the wake of the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres, July-November 1917) through figurative and literal hell...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.