Townie Books: Book Club – The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

The Warm Hands of Ghosts is a richly atmospheric historical fantasy set during World War I. Published in 2024, the story alternates between two timelines and perspectives:

January 1918: Laura Iven, a Canadian nurse wounded in service, returns home to Halifax after learning of her brother Freddie’s presumed death. Troubled by inconsistencies surrounding the news, she volunteers to return to Belgium to uncover the truth. Along the way, she encounters whispers of haunted trenches and a peculiar innkeeper whose wine offers oblivion.

November 1917: Freddie Iven awakens buried beneath an explosion in a German pillbox alongside a wounded German soldier named Hans Winter. They survive and escape together. In the chaos of No Man’s Land, Freddie comes under the sway of a mysterious fiddler named Faland, whose music and odd hospitality seem to promise escape from the war’s devastation—but it’s ambiguous if that escape is real or supernatural.

As Laura and Freddie’s paths converge, the boundaries between grief, memory, and the supernatural blur—raising the haunting question: what is worth salvaging in a world so fractured?