The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

There are a number of threads of stories that are deftly interwoven in this tale of war and it's effects in 1941. There is the big picture and the personal picture, which is my favorite technique for story telling for impact that is set within a historical time frame. So, World War II is raging on in Europe. We at home are largely ignorant of the specifics about what is going on. And this story is going to make us see why we should have cared about that and what role media and fate in our decisions as people and as a nation.
The close in story is of a postmistress in a small town. She is intimately involved in the lives of her town. She is their source of information, she is the lifeline to what Emma's husband Will is a doctor, and he has a lapse of judgment, losses a patient he is likely to have lost anyway, but he didn't see it coming, and he responds by withdrawing from the life he knows and going to England to help wounded soldiers there. He feels there is something terrible going on there, that help is needed.
During a bombing raid in London he meets Frankie, a brash and beautiful reporter who enthusiastically wends her way into stories of people trying to leave Europe, trying to escape, and she witnesses first hand what the fate of those who stay will be. She sees people shot for not hearing a command the first time. She throws herself fully into their lives and she is gradually broken by them. No one wants to hear the horror she has to tell, and eventually she has to leave, come home, escape.
Frankie choses Will's home, and tries to find a way to heal there. It is a story that starts and ends on a rocky ground, but the middle is deftly told and well worth the read.