Customer Reviews

A Thread of Grace

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A Thread of Grace starts with the Italian surrender to the Allies during WWII. Claudette Blum and her father are Jewish refugees intent on crossing the Alps from France in order to find freedom. What they find instead is more Germans.

This is a story of the German occupation of Northern Italy. Roman Catholic priests and nuns saved many Jews from the Germans who were intent on finding them and sending them to the concentration camps. Even though the Germans were fighting and being hit by air attacks daily they were still diligent about rounding up the Jews in the area.

Italians hid and helped the Jews. The Italian resistance fought the Germans. This novel is a historical fiction depicting the actions of the people in Northern Italy.

The characters in this book are wonderful. Renzo is a rogue who seamlessly flits between the Germans, the resistance and the Jews. Claudette is the tragic character caught up in an awful war. Schramm is the uptight scumbag German obeying his orders and fighting his conscience afterwords.

I loved this book and learning about all about this area during the war. So many people helped others at great peril to themselves.

A Thread of Grace is a wonderful touching story centering on the violent tormented stories of a varied cast of characters in Northern Italy during the German occupation. The author's superb writing style (I loved The Sparrow)carrys the novel forward with wonderfully developed characters and a fast paced rivetting plot grounded firmly in the true story of the valiant efforts of Italian partisans to save the lives of thousands of Jewish refugees from 1943 to 1945. Funny, poignant, tragic, fascinating this is top-notch historical fiction. Great novel!

I guess I'm a fairly late-comer to Mary Doria Russell's work, but I thought this book was amazing. Yes, there were lots of characters of all ages and nationalities, lots of locations (mostly in Italy), but Russell made everything (and everybody) come alive through her writing.

I'm not into science fiction, so I'll probably not read her two first books, but I've already ordered (and am looking forward to reading) her fourth book, about the Middle East in the early '20's.

And, even though there were not too many characters in "Thread" left alive at the end of the book, I'd be interested if she wrote a sequel.
That's the mark of a good novelist. She leaves the reader wanting to always know "more" about her story and people.