Strangers in Time
Strangers in Time
By: David Baldacci
[Fulfills prompt: ‘A book with a clock on the cover’ for the Shelf Reflection 2026 Reading Challenge]
[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]
[This book was nominated for the ‘Best Historical Fiction’ category of the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge ]
“This was their story. Three people standing together against all the world could hurl at them.”
Why did I think this was a book about time travel?! I think the title is a little misleading, but I tried to come up with a better one and the best I could come up with was ‘The Warden and the Orphans’ and I’m not sure people are going to be grabbing that off the shelves.
Anyway, there is no time traveling in this novel other than the fact that it takes place back in WWII…………………... Back in time. There it is.
Strangers in Time is quite the perilous and tragic story. It follows three characters— Charlie, Molly, and Ignatius Oliver— and their varied lives in London during all the Nazi bombing.
If you guessed that Ignatius Oliver was a book keeper, you would be correct. To the surprise of no one. Actually he took it over from his late wife Imogen, but I’m pretty sure with a name like that, it was always his destiny.
Charlie (14) is the East End young chap with the Cockney accent forced into Robin Hooding for himself and his grandma because his parents and grandfather all died during the war and they are barely scraping by.
Molly (15) was sent to the country at the beginning of the war (like the Pevensies but without the magical wardrobe) and returned to her West End home to find only her childhood nanny there— both parents are gone, but not necessarily dead.
My tone thus far in this review has been somewhat casual (for no apparent reason) but the book is anything but. This story is not really about the war as much as it is about what carries us through hardship.
As soon as we meet all three characters we see they have all lost something or someone. But it’s the way that they continue to lose, chapter after chapter, that has you wondering— is there any hope to be found in this book? Every time you think we’re turning the corner, the corner is blown to bits.
But even though Baldacci provided no shortage of tragedies, he somehow managed to still fashion a story that makes you feel good— granted, it takes a bit to see it— but you realize, the goodness is in the people, not the circumstances.
“while the war years had tried their best to rob him of it, Charlie was still resolutely in possession of a heart.”
That might be one of my favorite descriptions of a character and I think it fits Charlie pretty well. Even though he steals, we discover the lines he won’t cross even when it puts himself at risk.
He questions whether he should be called the ‘Honorable Charles’ as his identification tag reads, but the fact that he feels he doesn’t deserve it tells you his character is developing, he indeed has a heart. Ignatius Oliver calls him Honorable “because he has the potential to be… As do we all.”
And that’s Ignatius for you. He sees the good. He’s the fatherly figure that Molly and Charlie both desperately need. Ignatius would never have considered himself that, but when people land on your doorstep, you rise to the occasion. Ignatius does have a shroud of mystery around his character because he is up to something secret and Charlie and Molly do get pulled into the danger, so Ignatius is more than what meets the eye.
As for Molly, she is a person of action and childlike faith. She may have had the means of an idyllic life in the West End, but she doesn’t live an entitled life. If anything, she lives as if everyone is entitled to the life she had. And when she loses it she doesn’t let the loss of that drive her into despair. She stands up to help. She is always on the verge of ‘doing something.’
“‘Young people are capable of a great deal if the need is there,’ she replied with spirit.”
She is not one to wait something out. Say she won’t do it. She will. And she’ll do it right now.
Yet “still the bombs fell and clusters of waterproof fire ignited the landscape, and all the darkness and evil of hell was forcefully and cruelly visited upon the earth.”
Having read many books set in WWII and having visited the Churchill War Rooms in London, much of what Baldacci describes of this time was not new to me, but the bombings are really the only part of the war that shows up in this book (well… and a small hint of espionage) so you are very immersed in the descriptions, imagining the fear, the unpredictability of the predictable, the race to the bomb shelters, the sifting through the rubble, not knowing when it will all be over.
To zero in on three different people from different walks of life experiencing the same hardship in their varying spheres really made it come alive. And I did learn some things that I had not known before which was interesting, though sad.
(Like Doodlebugs. Perhaps it held a more ominous tone during the war, but this innocuous nickname for such a deadly missile is quite the juxtaposition.)
What I liked most about this book was the message of community. That the brave thing was to keep showing up for each other. Being there. Doing the right thing. Serving others. Even if it costs us something. Because we need each other.
Consider these quotes from the book:
“‘We all have each lost a great deal in this terrible war. But amidst all this destruction and despair, we managed to find one another. As a mathematician I can tell you the odds of that happening are staggeringly long. But here we are, together. As though it were somehow preordained. Now, I want you both to know that so long as I am here, you will always have a home.’”
“together they had confronted a collective hardship that, at times, seemed beyond anyone’s capacity. It spoke well indeed of the resilience of the human spirit when one had friends with whom to share the sometimes calamitous burden of existence.”
“We all need someone at certain times in our lives. It makes the inevitable pain lessened and the periods of happiness exalted.”
Preordained is right. It is a reminder to open our eyes to the people God has placed in our path wherever we are. Who knows if we are there for such a time as that. Community bolstering human resilience in the calamitous times is a feature, not a bug, of our existence.
God created us to be in relationship with him, but also with other image-bearers. And I believe that perhaps some of the ‘why’ behind disasters is to remind us of that.
I can’t help but think of the isolation forced upon us by the Covid pandemic and the effect that had on people all over the world. In times of fear, of war, of uncertainty, of collective hardship, the power of community is great. To have community taken away is detrimental to everyone.
And the reason for that is because our Creator is love and love must be done outside of oneself.
Some other quotes I liked:
“‘We must make the best of what we have. To seek out something different merely because it is perceived better by standards laid out by people we may not even know? I would say that is the height of self-deceit.’”
“Humans make poor gods. We’re just not up for it.”
“Books filled with truth, turned to ash, and turning minds the same in their absence.”
“For there is good news yet to hear, and fine things to be seen, Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.” — G.K. Chesterton
My only critique was that I wish we would have gotten some sort of epilogue chapter or even paragraph told from Charlie’s point of view. I understand Molly’s story wrapped up last and I was glad to see what came of her, but I wanted another ‘matured’ look at the inner life of Charlie post-war and we only got an external perspective of that.
Recommendation
Baldacci writes a good thriller, to be sure, but he also did a great job with this historical fiction novel as well. It’s impressive the way authors can write completely different writing styles/tones to match the story and the setting.
I was a little disappointed that there was no time travel, but the disappointment dims when I think about the message of community and resilience and bravery herein that comes with showing up for others, even strangers in time.
I would definitely recommend this book.
[Content Advisory: 0 f-words, 1 s-words; no sexual content; mention of a rape; there is a decent amount of death and hardship described]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley** (again… I waited too long to read this…)
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