A thread of grace
Subtitle: a novel
By: Mary Doria Russell.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 430
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Fiction; World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews -- Rescue -- Fiction; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Fiction; World War, 1939-1945 -- Italy -- Fiction; Holocaust survivors -- Fiction; Jews -- Italy -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, this new novel is the first in seven years by the bestselling author 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 among the thousands of Jewish refugees scrambling over the Alps toward Italy, where they hope to be safe at last, now that the Italians have broken with Germany and made a separate peace with the Allies. The Blums will soon discover that Italy is anything but peaceful, as it becomes overnight an open battleground among the Nazis, the Allies, resistance fighters, Jews in hiding, and ordinary Italian civilians trying to survive. Mary Doria Russell sets her first historical novel against this dramatic background, tracing the lives of a handful of fascinating characters. Through them, she tells the little-known but true story of the network of Italian citizens who saved the lives of forty-three thousand Jews during the war's final phase. The result of five years of meticulous research, A Thread of Grace is an ambitious, engrossing novel of ideas, history, and marvelous characters that will please Russell's many fans and earn her even more.