Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris. When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighbourhood so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris in June of 1940, father and daughter flee to the Brittany coast to Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle. In Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, travels to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure's. Deftly interweaving the lives of multiple characters, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.