Caroline Scott has written a thoughtful novel about the tragedy of World War I, at home and on the battlefield. The Poppy Wife is about three brothers. One is killed and one becomes dysfunctional because of what was then called shell shock.
The third man is a photographer who, in 1921, goes from Ypres to Arras to Verdun in France and Belgium to photograph graves and sites where men have been killed, battlefields he experienced during the war. The photographs he takes are for their friends who are looking for comfort of a sort, but he suspects his work is meaningless.
The man who has what we would now call PTSD is listed as missing but his wife doesn't believe he is dead. She meets with his brother, the photographer, to search in the cemeteries England and the US and France have created where they try to record deaths and identify bodies. She joins with the photographer in what seems like a hopeless quest.
Scott is a scholar whose research is extensive but does not appear obvious; it doesn't break into the story. The point of view is unusual and the characters come slowly to life as we follow the brothers and the wife through the experiences of the men in 1917 and the later search of the two wife and brother for connections to the men who died.
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