The Photographer of the Lost

A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick

Perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and 1917

If someone you loved went missing, would you ever stop searching for them?

1921. The Great War is over and while many survivors have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie’s husband Francis has not come home. He has been declared ‘missing, believed killed’, but when Edie receives a mysterious photograph in the post, taken by Francis, hope flares. And so she begins to search.

Francis’s brother, Harry, is also searching. Hired by grieving families to photograph gravesites, he has returned to the Western Front. He too longs for Francis to be alive, so they can forgive each other for the last conversation they ever had.

And as Harry and Edie’s paths converge, they begin to get closer to a startling truth.

An incredibly moving account of an often-forgotten moment in history, The Photographer of the Lost is an epic novel of forbidden love, loss and the shattered hearts left behind in the wake of the First World War.

Caroline Scott is a freelance writer and historian specializing in WWI and women’s history. The Photographer of the Lost is partially inspired by her family history.