Introduction
You live in January 1946, and London still bears the physical and emotional scars of war. As a writer searching for a fresh literary subject, you struggle to find inspiration amid the ruins and rubble of the Blitz. You need a story that transcends the gloom and speaks to the enduring power of human connection.
An epistolary novel exploring how literature and unexpected connections heal the deep wounds of post-war London and occupied Guernsey.
Mary Ann Shaffer structures this journey through letters, newspaper clippings, and telegrams exchanged between Juliet Ashton and the residents of a Channel Island. You follow Juliet from her publishing life in London to her growing obsession with a quirky literary society born of wartime defiance.
As you read, you will find answers to several questions:
- How does a discarded book spark an unexpected correspondence across the English Channel?
- What role do literature and potato peel pie play in surviving military occupation?
- How does the legacy of a missing friend bind a tight-knit community together?
- Can a writer abandon her comfortable city life for an uncertain future on a remote island?
1. Origins and Setup
The story begins in January 1946 as London emerges from the shadow of the Second World War. Writer Juliet Ashton is actively searching for her next book subject during the post-war recovery period in London.
The epistolary narrative begins as an accidental exchange through a book by Charles Lamb, revealing an impromptu alibi created during the German occupation.
The Book Club Alibi
Connection is sparked through an unexpected channel when a Guernsey resident finds Juliet's name inside a book by Charles Lamb. A native of the island of Guernsey named Dawsey Adams comes across a book written by Charles Lamb that contains Juliet's name, prompting him to write to her.
Dawsey Adams writing a letter to Juliet Ashton after finding her name inside a book by Charles Lamb.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society originated as a desperate ruse to conceal an illegal hidden pig and evade German curfew laws. During the German Occupation, islanders were forbidden to keep pigs and were restricted by strict curfews. When neighbors gathered to feast on a secretly slaughtered pig hosted by Amelia Maugery, they were caught returning home after hours by a German patrol. Elizabeth McKenna improvised a cover story on the spot, claiming they were returning from a meeting of the Guernsey Literary Society. To maintain the lie, they quickly formed a genuine book club and even invited German officers to attend, while inventing a potato peel pie for refreshments.
An Eccentric Cast
The novel is constructed through a series of letters that celebrate the power of the written word and unexpected connections. Written with warmth and humor as an exchange of letters, the narrative highlights how literature brings people together in surprising ways.
The literary society features a diverse and eccentric group of literature lovers ranging from pig farmers to phrenologists. The members of the society encompass various backgrounds and professions, united by their shared passion for books and reading.
Pig farmers and phrenologists participating as literature lovers in the society.
Dawsey Adams, Amelia Maugery, and Elizabeth McKenna pulled off the ruse when caught by German soldiers, leading to the creation of the society.
2. Occupation Realities
Books served as vital psychological lifelines against the brutal slave labor policies and starvation enforced during the occupation.
You find that islanders cut off from outside news turned to books borrowed from Amelia Maugery's library. Strict curfews and fuel shortages forced families indoors during the dark years of war. Discussing authors like Charles Lamb, William Shakespeare, and Emily Bronte allowed members to temporarily escape their grim reality.
John Booker avoided alcoholism during the occupation by repeatedly reading The Letters of Seneca. Dawsey Adams found a lifelong friend in Charles Lamb through a used copy of his essays.
Books as Survival
Selected Essays of Elia and potato peel pie provided comfort during impossible times. Reading helped you maintain your humanity and forge deep bonds of friendship that made the unbearable bearable. Henry Toussant used his talent as a champion whistler to covertly follow German soldiers returning from the Saumarez Street brothel at night, disrupting their sleep and wearing down their morale.
Henry would match a soldier's tune, stop when he stopped, and slip into doorways to make the soldier feel constantly pursued in the dark.
Todt Worker Atrocities
Hitler's obsession with fortifying the Channel Islands led to the implementation of a brutal slave labor policy known as Death by Exhaustion. You realize that Hitler ordered massive coastal fortifications, bunkers, and tunnels, bringing over 16,000 slave workers to Guernsey under Himmler's policy. Workers were deliberately starved, overworked, and housed in abysmal conditions while building installations that rendered the islands more fortified than the Atlantic Wall.
Amelia Maugery and Eben Ramsey witnessed emaciated Todt workers searching for food and fish remnants in sewage pipes while guards beat them down with rifle butts.
John Booker successfully avoided forced labor and worse fates by impersonating his wealthy former employer during the occupation. When his employer, Lord Tobias Penn-Piers, panicked and fled to England during the initial bombing of Guernsey, his valet John Booker chose to stay behind to enjoy the wine cellar.
Booker posed in a velvet cloak and ruff for a portrait painted by Elizabeth McKenna to solidify his disguise as a noble lord before German officers inspected the manor at La Fort.
Evacuation and Relief
The emergency evacuation of Guernsey children to England before the German invasion forced families into agonizing separations. With only one day's notice before the German occupation, the States of Deliberation organized ships to evacuate school-age children and infants to England to protect them from the impending war. You had to make the wrenching choice to send your children away to strangers without knowing when or if they would ever return.
Eben Ramsey's grandson Eli was evacuated on June 20, 1940, and did not return for five years, missing his entire childhood.
By late 1944, food supplies on the island were completely exhausted, and both islanders and German soldiers were suffering from severe starvation. The Red Cross relief ship Vega finally rescued the starving population of Guernsey near the end of the war, bringing critical food boxes, clothing, and medical supplies that kept the population alive until liberation.
Micah Daniels meticulously recorded the contents of his Vega box, which included:
- 2 food boxes provided for every man, woman, and child on Guernsey from the Vega;
- 6 ounces of chocolate;
- 20 ounces of biscuits;
- 20 ounces of butter, alongside Spam and tinned salmon.
3. Elizabeth's Legacy
Elizabeth McKenna's fierce courage and tragic death in a concentration camp anchor the emotional core of Juliet's biography and island life.
Elizabeth was the intellectual and emotional spark behind the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, known for her quick wits and fearless confrontations with German soldiers. She provided compassionate protection to others and ultimately suffered arrest and deportation to a continental prison camp after hiding an escaped Polish slave worker.
Elizabeth slapped Adelaide Addison across the face and locked her out of St Brioc School when Adelaide reduced evacuee children to tears with gloomy religious warnings.
Courage in Ravensbruck
Although Juliet initially struggles to structure her random notes, Sidney points out that Elizabeth is the connecting thread of every story on the island. Through letters from Remy, who was imprisoned with her in Block Eleven at Ravensbruck, the islanders learn how Elizabeth constantly exhibited extraordinary courage and protected others until her execution.
Remy describes how Elizabeth took the blame for a stolen potato to save Alina from the overseers, and later smashed a guard's rod to protect a bleeding girl, leading to her execution in the poplar grove.
The letters and records reveal stark realities from the camps:
- twenty hours: the time Juliet had been on Guernsey when she first arrived;
- six hours: the time given to Elizabeth to move her belongings to the cottage;
- four hundred women: the number of inmates held in Block Eleven at Ravensbruck;
- sixty pounds: Remy's weight upon arriving at the hospice in Louviers.
Literary Discoveries
Isola pulls out eight letters from her Granny Pheen's biscuit tin, written by O.F.O'F.W.W., telling fantastical stories about a cat named Solange. Sir William Otis arrives from London and authenticates them as genuine letters from Oscar Wilde, written after his 1893 visit to Jersey.
Isola takes Sir William Otis for a reckless test drive on a second-hand motorcycle from Lenoux's Garage after he authenticates the letters.
A conspiracy by rivals to steal the Oscar Wilde letters is foiled by vigilant observation and quick local action. Billee Bee Jones infiltrates Stephens & Stark to steal the Wilde letters on behalf of Gilly Gilbert from The London Hue and Cry. Isola and Kit track her movements, lock her in the smokehouse with Zenobia the parrot, and recover the documents before she can escape.
Isola and Kit shadow Billee Bee, trap her in the smokehouse, and unleash Zenobia to peck at her angora cap.
4. Transformation and Resolution
Juliet undergoes a personal awakening, rejects an incompatible suitor, secures guardianship of Kit, and commits her future to Guernsey.
Susan Scott forces Juliet to cut her hair, buy her first new dress in four years, and use new cosmetics, transforming her from a listless journalist into a dashing author. Juliet feels bedraggled at thirty-two years old before her makeover. Sidney Stark and Susan push Juliet to tour regional bookshops as part of her post-war book tour for Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. Meeting enthusiastic readers and reading dramatic Guernsey letters breaks her emotional numbness and reawakens her writing passion.
Juliet's Awakening
Isola Pribby studies a phrenology manual sent by Sidney that contains one hundred illustrations to diagnose human behavior. Isola reads head bumps to check for traits like Amativeness, Conjugal Love, and the Benevolence spot.
Isola reads the bumps on Eben's head, causing his hair to stand on end and making the grieving Remy burst into unexpected laughter. Isola later investigates Dawsey's house because she mistakenly believes he is in love with Remy.
Adoption and Romance
Markham Reynolds arrives on Guernsey and displays a condescending attitude toward the island, Elizabeth's legacy, and Kit. Markham tells Juliet that her new friends have unfairly saddled her with their responsibilities, prompting Juliet to order him out of her home. Juliet permanently severs ties with him after this dismissal.
Realizing she cannot bear a future without Kit, Juliet consults Amelia and Mr Dilwyn regarding guardianship and adoption.
Kit brings her cardboard box to Juliet's bed, opening it to reveal Elizabeth's photograph, a Christian Hellman inscription in a Rilke poetry book, and a baby pillow.
Overcoming mutual silences and misunderstandings, Juliet directly proposes marriage to Dawsey Adams, and he readily accepts.
While Teddy Heckwith and Chester are outside, Juliet asks Dawsey if he would like to marry her, to which he responds, "My God, yes."
5. Creation and Legacy
Mary Ann Shaffer traveled to England in 1980 to research a biography on Kathleen Scott, wife of polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Finding the archives consisting only of illegible pencil notes, she abandoned the project and impulsively visited Guernsey. A terrible fog grounded all transport and trapped her at the airport.
Mary Ann Shaffer's accidental airport bookstore discovery in 1980 and family collaboration brought a timeless story of readership to life.
Mary Ann was stranded in the Guernsey airport when the ferry service halted, airplanes were grounded, and the last taxi drove away. Unable to endure a day without reading, she helped herself to offerings at the Guernsey airport bookstore. In 1980, it was a major outlet for writings on the wartime occupation of the island by the Germans.
Inspiration from Fog
Left with only candy from vending machines for bodily nourishment, Mary Ann bought an armload of books on Guernsey's wartime experiences to secure spiritual aliment. Friends and fellow writers Sara Loyster and Julia Poppy demanded, beguiled, cajoled, and read every word of the first dozen drafts.
The Writing Process
When Mary Ann's health began to fail just as substantial rewriting was requested by her editor Susan Kamil, her niece Annie Barrows stepped in to finish the book without hesitation. Annie Barrows put down the book she was writing, pushed up her sleeves, and took over the manuscript. In Annie's family, asking someone to pass the butter inevitably incurred a story.
Readers from all over the world wrote letters expressing a desire to go to Guernsey and join a book club or become a member of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Post-publication, readers reached out to share personal childhood memories, such as a Guernsey native's evacuation and first glimpse of a black cow, or a German child hiding a French soldier in her attic.
10 Key Ideas
- The epistolary narrative begins as an accidental exchange through a book by Charles Lamb, revealing an impromptu alibi created during the German occupation.
- Books served as vital psychological lifelines against the brutal slave labor policies and starvation enforced during the occupation.
- The emergency evacuation of Guernsey children to England before the German invasion forced families into agonizing separations.
- Elizabeth McKenna's fierce courage and tragic death in a concentration camp anchor the emotional core of Juliet's biography and island life.
- Isola and Kit shadow Billee Bee, trap her in the smokehouse, and unleash Zenobia to peck at her angora cap.
- Susan Scott forces Juliet to cut her hair, buy her first new dress in four years, and use new cosmetics, transforming her from a listless journalist into a dashing author.
- Markham Reynolds arrives on Guernsey and displays a condescending attitude toward the island, Elizabeth's legacy, and Kit.
- Overcoming mutual silences and misunderstandings, Juliet directly proposes marriage to Dawsey Adams, and he readily accepts.
- Mary Ann Shaffer's accidental airport bookstore discovery in 1980 and family collaboration brought a timeless story of readership to life.
- Readers from all over the world wrote letters expressing a desire to go to Guernsey and join a book club or become a member of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.