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Italian citizens saved more than 43,000 Jews during the last 20 months
of World War II. Russell has transmuted this little-known history into an
expansive, well-researched, and compelling novel.
As the story
opens, the mountainous region of northwest Italy has been relatively
untouched by WWII, and even Jews have been safe. When Italy breaks with
Germany in 1943 and pulls out of southern France, thousands of Jewish
refugees cross the mountains in search of safety. But the German
occupation of Italy poses a new threat. Even with the list that's
provided, it can be hard to keep track of all the characters--Catholics
and Jews, priests and rabbis, Germans and Italians, old and young, Nazis
and Resistance fighters.
But Russell is good at presenting the
human story while never using the war merely as a backdrop for personal
dramas. In fact, to mirror the arbitrary nature of survival during
wartime, she has said that she flipped a coin to determine who among her
characters would live and who would die. |
