All the Light We Cannot See

After Madame’s death, Etienne retreats to his room for four days. When he comes downstairs, he takes charge, asking the women to leave so that he may resume caring for Marie-Laure. He immediately creates a false back to the wardrobe so that they can reach the attic secretly. He asks Marie-Laure for details of how Madame received and transmitted information. Marie-Laure eagerly agrees to continue going to the baker and bringing home the information baked into their daily loaf of bread.

Eventually, Neumann Two and Werner arrive in Russia at their duty station. Werner is to use the radio transceivers to locate enemy radio positions. He is surprised and happy to be reunited with Frank Volkheimer. Werner repairs the equipment.

Etienne rigs up warning bells throughout the house so that they can hear if someone enters when they are upstairs. Marie-Laure retrieves the loaf containing numbers. After dark, as they ascend to the attic, Etienne refers to Madame’s joke about the boiling frog; he wonders if Madame meant the frog to represent her or the Germans.

Werner attempts to locate partisan radio transmissions, as the German supply trains have been hit repeatedly. He doesn’t find anything. The other members of his unit are the engineer, Walter Bernd, and Neumann One, a driver, as well as Volkheimer and Neumann Two.

Etienne watches a group of German officers gather on the city ramparts through binoculars; then he transmits the numbers contained in the loaf of bread that day. He receives information to transmit every few days, and he has given up trying to decode the messages. Marie-Laure comes upstairs as he broadcasts a brief snippet of music—tonight it is Vivaldi. They dance to the music, and Etienne decides that this is what the code means, for him.

Werner locates a partisan radio transmission. Volkheimer, Bernd, and Neumann Two go to the location and kill the partisans. Afterward, Werner goes into the house to retrieve the equipment. The partisan radio system consists of salvage and homemade junk, similar to his first radio, which could have transmitted to a distance of 30 miles at the most. Next, they burn the building with the bodies inside.

Von Rumpel is called to a location to grade stones. Bag after bag of jewelry await him: the loot of the concentration camps.

All winter, Marie continues to retrieve the loaves containing secret messages. Frequently, she passes the grotto on her way home, stopping to visit the snails, unlocking the gate with the iron key given to her by Hubert Bazin.

It is January 1943, and Werner finds four transmissions. Their captain promises all sorts of rewards. Volkheimer takes clothing from any Russian prisoner who is his size, because his own clothing is worn and his size is difficult to find.

Sometimes, when Marie-Laure retrieves their bread, there are additional messages to read. Etienne continues to broadcast; at times the broadcasts take six minutes, which is far too long. He knows it will only be a matter of time before someone finds them.

Von Rumpel finds the second reproduction diamond in the possession of a thief arrested for burgling the house of a prominent donor to the Natural History Museum in Paris. Two down, only two more to go.

In December 1943, Marie-Laure and Etienne continue their work. The authorities have decreed that everyone should leave the town, except those with medical reasons to stay. Etienne is determined to stay at any cost in order to continue his work with the radio.

As 1943 becomes 1944, Werner suffers a fever and diarrhea. The German army is in full retreat. He dreams constantly of his sister, though he has not written to her in a year.

Von Rumpel has become obsessed with finding the Sea of Flames in order to stop his cancer. Hs search takes him to a château north of Paris, where he finds the third fake stone. Von Rumpel remembers the extraordinary box containing the stone at the museum. Who could have possibly been the third trusted courier?

The Germans step up reprisals for their losses, and Etienne’s radio work continues. Etienne tries to explain to Marie-Laure the extent of the loss of life in war and that the numbers he reads are not simply numbers: they have repercussions in the real world.

Von Rumpel enters the locksmith’s apartment in Paris. He finds the model town, realizes its potential as a hiding place, and crushes the model of the house he is standing in with his foot.

In April 1944, Werner’s unit enters Vienna. He attributes a transmission to a nearby apartment. When they enter, there is no radio. Neumann Two, frightened, shoots and kills a woman and her 7-year-old daughter, whom he finds hiding in a closet.

Marie-Laure receives both parts of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for her 16th birthday. She begins immediately reading it out loud to Etienne, having never finished the book she was forced to abandon four years earlier in Paris.

A new commander sends a telegram requesting assistance in locating a partisan radio broadcaster in the area around Saint-Malo.