A Thread of Grace

A THREAD OF GRACE: Mary Doria Russell: Random House: Fiction: 422 pages

Mary Doria Russell’s newest book presents a fictionalized account of the Jewish story in Italy during the last 20 months of World War II. The northern Italian Jews have lived peaceably with their Catholic neighbors for centuries, and the war has not changed this. In 1943, when Italy breaks with Germany, their troops retreat from southern France and the balance changes. Many Jewish refugees in southern France now cross the Alps into the Liguria region where they are hidden and protected by most of the residents – including the Catholic clergy.

The “primary” character is Italian Jew, Renzo Leoni, a pilot during the Abyssinian campaign of 1935, who is reluctantly drawn into the task of caring for and protecting the Jewish refugees and locals from the increasingly violent and vindictive German army of occupation. He works with a large cast of characters including the rabbi, Iacopo Soncini and his wife Mirella; the priest, Don Osvaldo Tomitz; teenage refugees Claudette Blum and Duno Brossler; and a Nazi deserter and physician, Werner Schramm, who claims responsibility for the deaths of 91,867 at Auschwitz and in other “programs”. These people do their best to defy the Germans. Resistance fighters come to include Jew and Catholic, young and old, Fascist and Communist alike as they have to deal with the retreating Germans and the advancing Allies. The day finally comes when Germany surrenders, but the high price of war didn’t end there – the scars on these people were permanent.

Russell provides a well researched view of a huge cast of characters, languages and political ideology (which is confusing at times – even with maps and a list of characters), but she still manages to convey the heart, courage and history of this area and time. The “thread of grace” is that so many unselfishly worked together for the good of all – something we all need to remember.

DB