All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

From Goodreads.com:
   Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall.
   In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.
   Doerr's gorgeous combination of soaring imagination with observation is electric. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is his most ambitious and dazzling work.

"You know the greatest lesson of history? It's that history is whatever the victors say it is. That's the lesson. Whoever wins, that's who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are."

  Werner was small for his age and always had a hard time not doing what was expected of him. I can't imagine living during this period in time, being swept up into the atmosphere and feeling, the whole time, that something wasn't right and at the same time, being so afraid of those in charge that you feel as if you have no choice. Werner was such an innocent, he just wanted an education, to be able to make something of himself instead of going to the mines that boys from his home were funneled into to work. I'm not even sure what to say about Marie-Laure, she was so cherished by those who knew her and brave. She was so brave, even if she didn't see it that way.
   I loved Marie-Laure, but I felt more for Werner. The supporting characters are just as beautiful as the main. Marie-Laure's great uncle Etienne, Jutta, the giant Volkheimer, Marie-Laure's papa, I liked them all.
  This book is magnetic. It jumps back and forth in time but always tells you the month and year for each Part. I feel like I've made new friends that I will need to visit from time to time. I went on their journeys and lived their lives and cannot leave them for long.