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Community Corner

An Ap-Peeling Selection for Readers

History, family and the struggle between good and evil are featured in our first selection for "Top Shelf."

Today launches the first of a weekly book column here at St. Michael Patch. We’ll cover the gamut from old classics to popular new releases. The best part – if it is covered in this column – there are a half dozen or more copies available at the St. Michael library waiting to be checked out.

We encourage readers to give their impressions on the book in the comments section below.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is the inaugural book of the aunt and niece team of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. A lovely, fast-reading piece of historical fiction, the book draws you into the women you soon feel you know as friends.

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This debut novel is written as a series of letters that tells the history of a small group of Channel Islanders (English women) over their five years of Nazi occupation during WWII. The epistolary style takes some adjustment (the entire book is written as letters sent between the characters), but is worth the effort in the end.

The society is created one late night when the group must explain to patrolling Nazi soldiers, why they are out past curfew. In truth – they had shared a forbidden meal of the roast pig one friend had cleverly managed to shield from the Nazis. At that panicked moment, they told the Germans they were meeting to discuss great books (hiding meat would have meant deportation to a concentration camp). To their shock and surprise, the Nazi leader wishes to join them at future meetings. In order to protect their ruse, they must actually find books to read and meet regularly to discuss.

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Juliet, a popular wartime writer, has lost her passion for writing, tired of chirping about fluff as WWII raged on. After the war, through a series of events, she becomes connected to the women of the Potato Peel Society. Their name derives from the scraps and creative substitutions the women used to cobble together a pie during the time the Nazis rationed food and supplies. Each pie functions as a piece de resistance, reminding them that they could adapt and survive as well.

Juliet begins to correspond with these women, learning through their letters the pain, joy, anguish and heart-breaking losses they suffered during the occupation.

At the center of the novel, is the indomitable young Elizabeth, whom we never see, but whose spirit and resistance is the bedrock of the story. What Elizabeth leaves behind when sent to a concentration camp, draws the women together forever.

You turn the last page of this book wishing deeply you could meet these women –Amelia, Clovis, Eben, Isola and especially Elizabeth – and spend some time in Guernsey.

The Potato Peel Society is a funny, touching, poignant book that reads fast but stays with you long after you turn the last page.  It does not gloss over the horrors of the Nazis, yet it remains hopeful throughout. The society brings together neighbors no matter their station, who find comfort in each other and in their shared books, as they endure their Nazi occupation. The Potato Peel Society reminds us the strength of community and the power of an excellent book to help one escape.

Special thanks to Marla Scherber and the staff at the St. Michael Library for coordinating this column. 

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