OTOR: Historically Speaking Book Club - The Warm Hands of Ghosts Katherine Arden

Program Type:

Book Group

Age Group:

Adults
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Event Details

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden


 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 an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.

Scheduled books:

Oct. 2025 - The Thread Collectors by Shaunna J. Edwards, Alyson Richman

Nov. 2025 - The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamal 

Dec. 2025 -  Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 

Jan. 2026 -  Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Feb. 2026 - The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

March 2026 - Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

April 2026 - The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters 

May 2026 - James by Percival Everett

 

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