A Thread of Grace

by Russell, Mary Doria

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New York U. S. A.: Ballantine Books. As New 2005. Softcover. Marfree, acidfree later prtg, not marked-in, underscored, clearance or discard. Mails from NYC usually within 12 hours. ; 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches; 439 pages; Online Rev: Ms Russell's extraordinary & complex historical novel, A Thread of Grace, is the kind of book that you will find yourself haunted by long after finishing the last page. It opens with a group of Jewish refugees being escorted to safe-keeping by Italian soldiers. After making the arduous journey over a steep mountain pass, they are welcomed into a small village with warm food & clean beds. They have barely laid their heads to rest when news is received that Mussolini has just surrendered Italy to Hitler, putting them in danger yet again. This opening sequence is a grim foreshadowing of the heart-breaking journey these characters will experience in their struggle for survival. The rich fictional narrative is woven through the factual military maneuvers & political games at the end of WW II, sharing a little-known story of a group of Italian citizens that sheltered more than 40, 000 Jews from grueling work camp executions. Rather than the bleak & hopeless feeling that might be expected, the novel has the opposite effect; it reminds us that just as there will always be war, crime, & death, so too will there be good people who sacrifice themselves to ease the suffering of others. Perhaps best of all, Russell succinctly opens & closes her writing with short pieces that bookend the story with the force of a freight train. Her moving finale wraps up her narrative in the present day, with a death bed scene that's sure to rip the heart out of readers of every faith & ancestry. On the surface, Russell's third novel may seem quite different from her earlier works. Both The Sparrow & its sequel, Children of God , were futuristic stories about Earth's first contact with alien life forms, but a closer look reveals several similarities. Fans of her earlier books will be pleased to find that Emilio Sandoz, the charismatic Jesuit priest from the first two books, finds new life in Renzo Leoni--A Thread of Grace's charming & haunted chameleon. The two have different circumstances & histories, but both characters are made of the same cloth--tormented by their consciences & plagued by unrequited love. Also similar to her earlier books, the characters in A Thread of Grace don't all enjoy a happy ending. A note in the reader's guide tells us that Russell flipped a coin to determine the fate of some of the characters. This may be upsetting for many readers, particularly those used to Hollywood endings, but it does serve as a frank reminder of the arbitrary nature of war & death. --Victoria Griffith From Publishers Weekly Busy, noisy & heartfelt, this sprawling novel by Russell--a striking departure from her previous two acclaimed SF thrillers, --chronicles the Italian resistance to the Germans during the last two years of WWII. Three cultures mingle uneasily in Porto Sant'Andrea on the Ligurian coast of northwest Italy--the Italian Jews of the village, headed by the chief rabbi Iacopo Soncini; the Italian Catholics, like Sant'Andrea's priest Don Osvaldo Tomitz, who befriend & shelter the Jews; & the occupying Germans invited by Mussolini's crumbling regime. In the last camp is the drunken, tubercular Nazi deserter, Doktor Schramm, a broken man who confesses to Don Osvaldo that while working in state hospitals & Auschwitz, he was responsible for murdering 91, 867 people. Meanwhile, Jewish refugees in southern France, including Albert Blum & his teenage daughter, Claudette, are fleeing across the Alps to Italy, hoping to find sanctuary there. Russell pursues numerous narrative threads, including the Blums' perilous flight over the mountains; Italian Jew Renzo Leoni's personal coming to terms with his participation in the Dolo hospital bombing during the Abyssinian campaign in 1935; the dangerous frenzy of the Italian partisans; & the bloody-mindedness of German officers resolved to carry out Hitler's murderous racial policy despite mounting evidence .

Book summary

During World War II, many Jews managed to find refuge in Italy, particularly in the Piedmont region, where they were sheltered from the occupying Germans by antifascist peasants and others. In this elegiac novel, a woman named Lidia Leoni and her war-veteran son head a group of sympathetic Italians who help hide the refugees--who include a German doctor disaffected with the Nazi regime. Mary Doria Russell creates a panoramic, richly populated story of heroism and cowardice, good and evil, as she brings to life a troubled historical era.