A Thread of Grace

Starred review from November 29, 2004
Busy, noisy and heartfelt, this sprawling novel by Russell—a striking departure from her previous two acclaimed SF thrillers, The Sparrow
and Children of God—
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 and shelter the Jews; and 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 and Auschwitz, he was responsible for murdering 91,867 people. Meanwhile, Jewish refugees in southern France, including Albert Blum and 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; and the bloody-mindedness of German officers resolved to carry out Hitler's murderous racial policy despite mounting evidence of its futility. The action moves swiftly, with impressive authority, jostling dialogue, vibrant personalities and meticulous, unexpected historical detail. The intensity and intimacy of Russell's storytelling, her sharp character writing and fierce sense of humor bring fresh immediacy to this riveting WWII saga. Agent, Jane Dystel. (Feb. 1)

Forecast:
This is a worthy successor to high-caliber, crowd-pleasing WWII novels like
Corelli's Mandolin or
The English Patient. With the publisher firmly behind it—Russell will embark on a 12-city author tour—expect substantial sales.

February 15, 2005
In her two highly acclaimed novels, "The Sparrow "and "Children of God", Russell cast her characters in futuristic settings where they debated the nature of sin and grace. Russell's latest effort looks back to September 1943, when Italy had broken its alliance with Germany and joined in a separate peace with the Allies. Albert Blum and 14-year-old daughter Claudette, Jewish refugees in southern France, must leave that region (which Italy had occupied) and cross the Alps to Italy to flee German persecution. While they encounter all the typical dangers of such a journey, they are not much inspired by their arrival in Italy, where pockets of Nazis continue to persecute Jews. A "thread of grace" runs through this disorder, however, in the forms of Italian Catholic resisters, an Italian rabbi, and a disaffected German doctor who provide safe harbor for the Blum family and other Jews. The surfeit of characters devolves into one-dimensional portraits of individuals for whom we can hardly muster any sympathy or identification; despite Russell's consummate storytelling ability, the multitudinous plot lines diverge rather than converge. Even so, fans of her previous novels will devour this book, and most libraries will want a copy. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 10/1/04.] -Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Lancaster, PA

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2004
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)