Description

Occur Italy throughout the dramatic finale of World-War II, this new novel may be the first in seven years by the bestselling writer of The Sparrow and Children of God.It is September 8, 1943, and fourteen-year-old Claudette Blum is learning Italian with a suitcase in her hand. She and her father are one of the a large number of Jewish refugees scrambling within the Alps toward Italy, where they aspire to be safe finally, since the Italians have broken with Germany and made another peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon realize that Italy is anything but peaceful, because it becomes overnight an open battleground one of the Nazis, the Allies, resistance fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian civilians attempting to survive.Mary Doria Russell sets her first historical novel from this dramatic background, tracing the lives of a number of interesting characters. Through them, she tells the small-known but-true story of the network of Italian citizens who saved the lives of forty-three-thousand Jews throughout the war’s ultimate stage.