One Good Thing
The compelling new wartime novel from the bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Italy, 1940. Lili Passigli's studies in Ferrara abruptly end when Mussolini's Racial Laws mark her as Jewish and 'inferior'. With Fascist propaganda spreading and hatred staining the city, the world around Lili darkens further with Germany's invasion of northern Italy. Stranded in Nazi-occupied territory, Lili and her best friend Esti, along with Esti's young son, must flee south with the help of the Resistance. On this trek through the war-ravaged country, they face untold challenges and devastating decisions as they fight to reach the Allies and freedom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hunter follows her bestseller We Were the Lucky Ones with a stirring novel of bravery and sacrifice in WWII Italy. Esti and Lili, two 20-something Jewish women, resist fascism and anti-Semitism by forging IDs and helping to shelter orphaned refugee children. When Esti is badly beaten by a pro-Mussolini gang, she urges Lili to take Esti's three-year-old son, Theo, and run. Avoiding trains, where they would risk arrest, Lili and Theo trek mostly on foot across Italy. In Rome, she meets Thomas, an escaped American POW disguised in a German uniform, and helps him search for his regiment. Thomas and Theo take to each other immediately, and Lili slowly realizes she's in love with the American. All along, she writes letters to Esti and to her own father, Massimo, who has fled to Switzerland. Lili and Massimo reunite, but she never hears back from Esti, who is rumored to have been sent to Auschwitz. Hunter movingly depicts the bond between Lili and the precocious Theo, and ends the novel on a hopeful note without flinching from the war's horrors. Fans of Hunter's previous book and the miniseries based on it will be pleased.
