The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was co-written in 2008 by Mary Ann Shaffer and her niece, Annie Barrows, after Shaffer became ill with cancer and couldn't finish writing the book herself. Guernsey was Shaffer's first novel and Barrows' first for adults, following the publication of several books in her Ivy and Bean children's fiction series.
The novel was published by the Dial Press and was the Times Paperback of the Year in 2009. It won the Indies Choice Book Award for Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction) that same year.
Guernsey is a novel told exclusively in letters and tells the story of Juliet Ashton, a writer struggling to find inspiration in the years following World War II. A letter from a stranger who found her name in a used book introduces her to the small community of Guernsey, an island off the coast of England, and its variety of eccentric occupants. Juliet is drawn into into the group of people known as the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a book club born in the midst of the German occupation, and finds herself becoming part of their family.
