The acclaimed author of A Train in Winter returns with the "moving
finale" (The Economist) of her Resistance Quartet--the powerful and
inspiring true story of the women of the partisan resistance who fought
against Italy's fascist regime during World War II.**
In the late summer of 1943, when Italy broke with the Germans and joined
the Allies after suffering catastrophic military losses, an Italian
Resistance was born. Four young Piedmontese women--Ada, Frida, Silvia
and Bianca--living secretly in the mountains surrounding Turin, risked
their lives to overthrow Italy's authoritarian government. They were
among the thousands of Italians who joined the Partisan effort to help
the Allies liberate their country from the German invaders and their
Fascist collaborators. What made this partisan war all the more
extraordinary was the number of women--like this brave quartet--who
swelled its ranks.
The bloody civil war that ensued pitted neighbor against neighbor, and
revealed the best and worst in Italian society. The courage shown by the
partisans was exemplary, and eventually bound them together into a
coherent fighting force. But the death rattle of Mussolini's two decades
of Fascist rule--with its corruption, greed, and anti-Semitism--was
unrelentingly violent and brutal.
Drawing on a rich cache of previously untranslated sources,
prize-winning historian Caroline Moorehead illuminates the experiences
of Ada, Frida, Silvia, and Bianca to tell the little-known story of the
women of the Italian partisan movement fighting for freedom against
fascism in all its forms, while Europe collapsed in smoldering ruins
around them.
