Daughter of Genoa

Devereaux (Escape to Tuscany) serves up a dramatic story of fascist resistance and a love triangle in 1944 Genoa. After Anna Pastorino’s home is destroyed by an RAF bomb, Father Vittorio arranges to hide her in the home of a typographer and his wife, knowing that the fascist police would arrest and turn her over to the Germans if they find out she is Jewish and has been using false papers. The industrious Anna once worked as a bookkeeper for a prominent shipbuilder. Now, seeking to keep busy, she helps aviator Massimo Teglio create forged identity cards for the resistance. As they work together, Anna falls for Massimo, who remembers meeting her brother years earlier. Meanwhile, as Father Vittorio’s tuberculosis symptoms worsen, he grapples with his attraction to Anna. The plot thickens when Vittorio learns Anna had been fired by the shipbuilder shortly before the war for being Jewish and her dismissal was linked to her husband’s death. Devereaux sustains an acute sense of the danger faced by her characters, and she adds depth with their personal dilemmas, such as Vittorio’s crisis of faith. Fans of WWII fiction won’t want to miss this. Agent: Broo Doherty, DHH Literary. (Dec.)