Set during the decades between the First and Second World Wars, Carry Me is a devastating historical saga about war, love, and escape, from the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning author of The Law of Dreams and The O’Briens.

Carry Me begins in 1909 on the Isle of Wight, England, and follows Billy Lange, the son of the skipper of a racing yacht belonging to a wealthy German-Jewish baron. Over the course of his childhood, Billy becomes entranced by the baron’s daughter, the elusive and willful Karin von Weinbrenner.

Golden Edwardian summers are soon shattered by the First World War, and when Billy and Karin are reunited on the baron’s Frankfurt estate in the aftermath the two bond over their fascination with the Wild West novels of Karl May and shared passion for speed, jazz, and the nightclubs of Frankfurt and Berlin. A childhood friendship deepens into a complex love affair while society loses its moral bearings and Germany marches toward the Second World War. This time, Billy and Karin dream of escape — from Germany and from history.

A vivid and powerfully rendered epic encompassing the two great wars of the twentieth century, Carry Me is both a sweeping historical novel and a love story for the ages.

Peter Behrens’s first novel, The Law of Dreams, won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and has been published in nine languages. His collection of short stories, Travelling Light, was reissued in 2013. The New York Times called his second novel, The O’Briens (2011), "a major achievement." Carry Me, his third novel, appeared in 2016. His stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, Tin House, Brick, Best Canadian Stories, Best Canadian Essays and many anthologies. Behrens is a native of Montreal and was educated at Lower Canada College, Concordia University, and McGill. He has held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University and was a 2015-16 Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Peter Behrens' profile page

• Short-listed, The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature
• Short-listed, National Jewish Book Awards

With stunning imagery and fully realized characters, Peter Behrens’ third novel is a worthy followup to The O’Briens and his critically acclaimed first novel, Law of Dreams … Timely in its depiction of North America as the mythical land of hope for so many, and timeless in its exploration of the effects of bigotry and the power of love, Carry Me is a brilliant and entertaining read.

Winnipeg Free Press

Eventful … impressive use of the past as a mirror to the world we live in now.

Quill & Quire

Carry Me’s perspective on war’s tragedies is beautifully composed, and heartbreakingly credible.

Shelf Awareness

Carry Me is another meditation on history and destiny … that make[s] the past feel stunningly close at hand.

Vogue

Carry Me is a moving meditation on identity and belonging, and a love story to get happily lost in.

Montreal Gazette

[A] staggeringly epic new novel about love and loss, identity and salvation in a society in the midst of a nervous collapse. It has been a long time since I’ve become tearful at the end of a novel but I must confess to doing so reading the final pages. The fate that befalls the young lovers at the centre of Carry Me is heartbreaking — and mesmerizing.

Toronto Star

There’s no doubt about Behrens’ talent.

Kirkus Reviews

A gripping story about a harrowing time in European history… Behrens is a gifted storyteller and Carry Me is no exception. It is not only a deeply researched historical novel, but it’s also a well-crafted and true tale of people, families and love affairs.

Vancouver Sun

Behrens is so fine at both sweeping and granular evocations of history, so good at vividly and economically painting his minor players … [his] prose thrills to the indelible and irrevocable.

Washington Post

Vividly imagined … This ambitious novel provides a panoramic view of a continent and a microscopic view of two individuals hovering precariously between the two World Wars … Moving seamlessly back and forth between times and countries, Behrens paints a stunningly intimate portrait in wide, universal strokes.

Booklist

A powerful tale … the tension and the expertly drawn portrait of Europe at war make this novel a winner.

Now Magazine

Behrens is a powerful stylist.

Globe and Mail

Behrens captures his narrator’s naïveté and the casual anti-Semitism of the times with great skill and intelligence … as true an observation about human nature as there is.

New York Times Book Review