The brilliant new novel about love, war and the ways of escape

Shot down on his first RAF mission, James Hunter, an English officer, spends the Second World War in a German POW camp. While other prisoners plan daring escapes, James begins studying a pair of redstarts near the camp. His interest in the birds captures the attention of the Kommandant, giving James cause to fear for his life. Meanwhile, back in England, James’s young wife, Rose, falls headlong into a passionate affair with another man. When James’s sister, Enid, loses everything during the Blitz in London, she comes to stay with Rose, and the two women form a surprising friendship that alters the course of all three of their lives.

Humphreys, the award-winning and bestselling author of six novels and two works of non-fiction, returns to the Second World War with her most exquisite, powerful novel yet. The Evening Chorus is a brilliant evocation of an unforgettable time and place and a natural history of both the war and the human heart.

HELEN HUMPHREYS’ last novel, The Reinvention Of Love, was a national bestseller. Coventry was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and a finalist for the Trillium Book Award. Humphreys won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize for Afterimage and the Toronto Book Award for Leaving Earth. Her much-loved novel The Lost Garden was a Canada Reads selection. The recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for literary excellence, Humphreys lives in Kingston, Ontario.

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“Sometimes a fictional character is so powerful I read the last pages of a book at a glacial pace to stall the inevitable ending. . . . Humphreys creates characters that are achingly human, and thus sympathetic.” — Toronto Star

“I am very glad to have spent some of my moments on earth reading The Evening Chorus. I reached the end with a sense of wonder that so much life and pain and beauty could be contained in so few pages.” — Boston Globe

“Absorbing, richly characterized, and marked by smart, delightful twists and turns, the novel’s fruitful visitation of war and its aftermath never fails to captivate. If there is such a thing as a cultural vocabulary of war, Humphreys adds welcome new words to it.” — National Post

“[H]ypnotic. . . . The Evening Chorus deserves a special place on your reading list this winter.” — NPR

“Humphreys creates a narrative arc that is compact and sinewy, yet from her spare prose and refined imagery springs an arresting novel of regret, contrition, and redemption that glimmers with transcendent moments of hope and valor. An ingeniously elegant and instinctively restrained tale about the durability of the human spirit.” — Booklist (starred review)

“[A] heartbreaking yet redemptive story about loss and survival. . . . Humphreys deserves more recognition for the emotional intensity and evocative lyricism of her seemingly straightforward prose and for her ability to quietly squirrel her way into the reader’s heart.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)