A THREAD OF GRACE

Classes ended last Friday, then I slept for fourteen hours and finished A Thread of Grace.  It was a long wait between books for Mary Doria Russell, and what a very different book from her first two - but the wait was certainly worth it. 

A belief in grace is all that keeps me from swallowing ground glass most days, and that thread does run through this book.  A difficult but compelling read, a story of great evil and great compassionate goodness existing side by side -  an account I hadn't heard before.  It's the story of Northern Italy at the tail end of WW II, the Italians finished with war, the Germans desperate to hold a front, the Jews who had escaped from occupied Southern France over the Alps hoping to find a safe haven in Italy, the partisans fighting a guerilla warfare against the Germans on their soil.   There's a large number of characters, but once I had time to really settle down and read without constant interruption I had no trouble with the large cast.

It's done without stereotyping - not all the Italian peasants are generous and good, not all the Nazis are unredeemably evil, but don't get too attached to anyone in the story - there is a low survival rate, I must warn you.  Not that it's unexpected, but it is a heartbreaking book.  Heartbreaking but full of the wonders of grace, the miracle of the human spirit.