In the Company of Angels: A NovelA compelling novel of dark miracles and angelic visitation, set in a Nazi-occupied Belgian town that is scented by chocolate and haunted by war. It is World War II, a small village in France near the border of Belgium. Marie Claire is a young French Jew, cared for by her grandmother, who cultivates flowers. A shattering of glass, and Marie Claire's village is in rubble. Her grandmother is dead, everyone is dead. She flees to the root cellar of her grandmother's house and waits . . . She is saved by two Belgian nuns who take Marie Claire away to their convent in Tournai, Belgium, where they have been hiding Jews for transport to Switzerland. It is then that the miracles begin. Is Marie Claire causing them The answer to that question remains mysterious until the last pages of this entirely original debut. In a town scented with chocolate, haunted by memories of the past and the desperation of the present, the miraculous is sometimes hard to recognize. A suspenseful novel of enormous power and sensitivity, In the Company of Angels introduces a distinctly imaginative new voice in fiction. |
From inside the book
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... Tournai's main industry . The banks , the univer- sities , the cafes , the souvenir shops which sold the nearly au- thentic relics : they all thrived on God . Survived by creating a city devoted to devotion . In Tournai , God ...
... Tournai , seeing God was a matter of civic pride . Then bombs came . Then soldiers . Then silence . Now recruitment posters cover the church doors . Ersatz kommando der waffen ! The Germans are asking for help . Support us ! they say ...
... Tournai , most divine acts were mod- erate , genial in nature . In fact , from what he had read in the papers , heard in the streets , he likened the visions of Tournai to paintings at an exhibition . When the face of Jesus was seen in ...