The Shock of the Light

Hall debuts with an enticing saga of wartime love and loss centered on a pair of twins from Cambridge, England. When Theo Armstrong joins the Royal Air Force, his sister, Tessa, begins training as a spy for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), telling her family she’s becoming a nurse. After Tessa makes a parachute drop into German-occupied France, she winds up joining the Resistance. Meanwhile, Theo flies into battle at Normandy with fellow pilot Richard Barnes, with whom he hopes to embark on a love affair if both survive the mission. A fiery dogfight ensues, leaving Richard’s fate uncertain in the aftermath, and Theo returns home, where the British government tells him and his parents that Tessa was a spy and that she’s gone missing. Later, Theo joins the government’s security directorate to find Tessa and other missing agents while keeping silent about his sexuality, which is criminalized in Britain. Hall then fast-forwards to 2003 when Theo works with PhD student Edie who is researching female agents in the SOE, and together they search for the truth about what happened to Tessa. Hall evokes the strong bond between siblings, showing how Tessa is not to be outdone by the heroic Theo, and the thrilling narrative highlights the perilous work of female SOE agents. Fans of WWII fiction won’t want to put it down. Agent: Gráinne Fox, UTA. (Mar.)