Resistance

1944. After the fall of Russia and the failed D-Day landings, a German counterattack lands on British soil. Within a month, half of Britain is occupied. The seat of British government has fled to Worcester, Churchill to Canada. A network of British resistance cells is all that is left to defy the German army.

Against this backdrop, RESISTANCE opens with Sarah Lewis waking to find her husband Tom has disappeared. She is not alone, as all the other women in the Welsh border valley of Olchon wake to find their husbands gone. With these sudden and unexplained absences, the women regroup as an isolated, all-female community and wait.

Later, a German patrol arrives in the valley, the purpose of their mission a mystery. When a severe winter forces the two groups together, a fragile mutual dependency develops. Sarah begins a faltering acquaintance with the patrol's commanding officer, Albrecht Wolfram, and it is to her that he reveals the purpose of his mission. But as the pressure of the war beyond presses in on this isolated community, its fragile state of harmony is increasingly threatened.

Imbued with immense imaginative breadth and confidence, Owen Sheers's debut novel unfolds with the pace and intensity of a thriller. A hymn to the glorious landscape of the Welsh border territories and a portrait of a community under siege, Resistance is a first novel of considerable grace and power.