A wonderful family saga that will keep book groups in discussion overtime with the richness of characters, history, place and time in this debut novel. A definite must for all public libraries.

Skeletons at the Feast is well paced and lessons hard learned by war and tragedy are softened by the depth of the characters’ souls and personal stories. It is a book hard to put down. However, there are no jubilant victors in this novel of WWII, only survivors who become skeletons of humanity. The tragic story of war is retold by Bohjalian in this tale where the survivors are, more interestingly, scared by their own knowledge, guilt, and conscious, as well as fear and torment by oppressors and allies as they flee Poland during nightmarish last days of WWII.