In The Warm Hands of Ghosts, an exquisite dark fantasy from Katherine Arden (The Girl in the Tower; The Bear and the Nightingale), a young nurse braves the combat zones of World War I to search for the truth about her lost brother.
Laura Iven's return to her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917 after three years' service as a combat nurse in the Canadian army should mark the end of the war for her. But a box containing the blood-stained personal effects of Freddie, Laura's younger brother and an army private, has arrived at the home where Laura is staying. Laura knows he must have died, but a mysterious postcard sewn into his jacket raises enough doubt that she reenlists, determined to go back to the front and find any clue to his fate.
Two months earlier, Freddie was on the run with a German soldier named Hans Winter after they became trapped in the same buried pillbox and helped each other escape. Winter is injured, and Freddie is desperate to keep him alive, even if it means treason. "If Freddie believed in one thing in this strange world, he believed in Laura," so he sets off for her previous post, unaware she has already returned to Canada.
The Iven siblings search for each other but, instead, find a mysterious fiddler whose magical music can erase the pain of war for a time--and for a price. In a world run mad with ghosts and death, the Ivens must help each other remember what is worth fighting for. This harrowing yet beautiful plunge into the horrors of war and the power of abiding love soars. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads