One good thing

Georgia Hunter, 1978-

Book - 2025

"From the New York Times-bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones, an unforgettable story of hardship and hope, courage and resilience, that follows one young woman's journey through war-torn Italy 1941, Emilia Romagna. Lili and Esti have been best friends since meeting at the University of Ferrara; when Esti's son Theo is born, they become as close as sisters. There is a war being fought across borders, and in Italy, Mussolini's Racial Laws have deemed Lili and Esti descendants of an 'inferior' Jewish race, but life somehow goes on-until Germany invades northern Italy, and the friends find themselves in occupied territory. Esti, older and fiercely self-assured, convinces Lili to flee first to a villa in th...e countryside to help hide a group of young war orphans, then to a convent in Florence, where they pose as nuns and forge false identification papers for the Underground. When disaster strikes at the convent, a critically wounded Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: To go on the run with Theo. Protect him while Esti can't. Terrified to travel on her own, Lili sets out on an epic journey south toward Allied territory, through Nazi-occupied villages and bombed-out cities, doing everything she can to keep Theo safe. A remarkable tale of friendship, motherhood, and survival, One Good Thing is a tender reminder that love for another person, even amidst darkness and uncertainty, can be reason to keep going"--

Saved in:
1 person waiting
3 copies ordered
Subjects
Genres
Historical fiction
Novels
Romans
Published
New York : Pamela Dorman Books/Viking 2025.
Language
English
Main Author
Georgia Hunter, 1978- (author)
Physical Description
pages cm
ISBN
9781984880932
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved