Book Club in a Box: The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society

Guernsey is one of four British Channel Islands that was occupied for five years (1940-1945) by the Nazis. This extraordinary story is one that few people, except for historians, are aware of. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows have recreated the wartime atmosphere in postwar London and Guernsey through the journalist, Juliet Ashton, and her relationship with the islanders. It all started with a letter from a farmer, Dawsey Adams, who was trying to track down books by Charles Lamb. Juliet's name and address were written inside the single copy of Lamb's essays that Dawsey owned. None of the Guernsey bookstores had survived the war and Dawsey was looking for help. His letter hinted at the existence of a strange book club called the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and its connection to a secret dinner of roast pig. Those two details alone guaranteed a spike in Juliet's interest. She responded and the rest is intriguingly revealed in the novel's subsequent correspondence between Juliet and the Guernsey inhabitants.