{image1}Fans of literary fiction know Chicagoland's Mary Doria Russell as the author of the critically-acclaimed and much-loved (by book clubs and fiction fans) novel "The Sparrow."
Her latest novel, "A Thread of Grace," is based on the true experiences of many Jews in Italy during World War II. During that time, many Jews fled other European countries seeking refuge from the Nazis in Italy, where ordinary people risked their lives and their homes in hiding Jews and providing them sustenance.
An Italian-American by birth and a Jew by choice, Doria Russell embarked on seven years of research and of writing "A Thread of Grace" after reading Alexander Stille's excellent non-fiction book about Jews in Italy called, "Benevolence and Betrayal." For her, the story of ordinary Italians' treatment of the Jews struck a deep chord.
The book has earned much-coveted starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews and Publisher's Weekly and has been praised for its epic proportions, thorough research and beautiful prose.
We talked to Mary Doria Russell about the book and about what she learned on her journey to write it.
OMC: What was it about Stille's book that got you thinking about or inspired your novel?
MDR: There's a section of the book called "The Priest, The Rabbi and the Aviator," which sounds like the set-up for a vaudeville joke, right? But the story was true, and riveting, and it pulled together two elements of my life: I am an Italian by heritage and a Jew by choice. And it was a story of heroism and decency in the face of global brutality that stunned me. The Danes are rightly praised for smuggling 7,100 Jews across their country to neutral Sweden during the Nazi occupation, but in Italy, 43,000 Jews were hidden, fed, defended and cared for during 20 months of relentless Nazi pressure. That's the highest survival rate in occupied Europe, but nobody seemed to know about it.
OMC: With so many compelling real stories why fictionalize everything right down to the place names? Wouldn't it be more powerful with concrete locations, etc. or would that just cloud things?
MDR: Well, there are hundreds of memoirs and histories and biographies, but none of those books seemed to put the story of the Italian response to the Holocaust together in a way that made an emotional impact. All the attention seems to be focused on the silence of Pius XII, and I felt the real story was the fact that neither the Italian clergy nor the Italian people needed an encyclical to tell them to act decently.
Fiction allowed me to organize the facts of Italian history around a coherent narrative with heart and tension. When you read a memoir, you know the narrator lived through the events. When you read a novel, you don't know which characters live and which die, so the moment-to-moment jeopardy feels real and immediate. Writing a novel also allowed me to raise larger questions about evil, guilt, atonement and forgiveness through the contrasts in my two core characters Werner Schramm and Renzo Leoni.
OMC: You've said that you actually had to tone down the acts of goodness among Italians after the Italian surrender. Why?
MDR: Well, in real life, Italians simply saw people who needed help and helped them. Early readers of my drafts said, "Oh, the peasants are too noble, the soldiers are too nice." Modern cynical Americans simply didn't believe in that automatic hospitality and willingness to help. So, I had to provide motives that I believe are plausible, and implicit in the actions of the Italians, but which they didn't really think about much at the time. For example, when the people of Ritanna took in Alfred Feldman and his father in 1943, nobody discussed why they did so. They just saw two cold, tired people who were being hunted like animals by the Germans. In my book, when Claudette Blum and her father are taken in by fictional villagers, people say, "My son is in Russia. Maybe someone there will be kind to him. Do unto others..."
OMC: How do you think what happened during World War II fits into Italy's long, checkered past with its Jewish residents?
MDR: The Papal States were nearly always awful places for Jews, but in the other kingdoms, at various times and in various places during the past 2,000 years, the Italian peninsula has been the best place in Europe to be Jewish. One of those times was during the Holocaust.
OMC: During your research did you find that Italians are eager to talk about the war and the treatment of the Jews and the partisans and everything else that was a part of World War II?
MDR: Not eager to talk about the war or the Holocaust as a big issue, as a whole, or as an abstract political discussion. People told me about their own lives, their own actions and decisions, their own experiences. They told of moments of terror, or shock, or gratitude, of sweetness, of sorrow, of rage. They spoke of what they knew personally, of human beings with names and faces.
OMC: From the appearances you've made so far do you find that American readers are encouraged to learn more about how the war affected Italy and Italians of all religious and political and regional stripes or for most of them is it just a darn good story?
MDR: The former, rather than the latter. I always have a moral core to what I write, and I deliberately work to make readers think hard about their assumptions and expectations. I want people to reconsider their attitudes, not just about World War II, but about war in general, about occupations and resistance to them, about the inevitable corruption of war and its waste and futility, as well as about the moral and physical dangers of looking the other way and removing ourselves from the fray.
OMC: What do you hope people will take away from the novel with regard to Italy during the war, Italian Jews, acts of kindness, etc.?
MDR: There is a big audience for books about the Holocaust, which remains a pivot point in history, but I do my best to make readers see parallels in current events, and to realize that we have watched and are watching genocides on CNN without lifting a finger. My job is to make people feel deeply uncomfortable! I don't want anyone reading "A Thread Of Grace" thinking, "Oh, I'd have been just as good as those Italian peasants. I'd be moral and decent just like they were." My job is to make it clear just how much courage it takes to risk your life and your family's lives, and your property, to help strangers. I want people to think, "God, would I ever be able to find that kind of strength?" And if the honest answer is no, I want people to reexamine their lives.
Big ambitions for a novel, but art can be powerful.
OMC: I know that in Piedmont, the synagogue in Casale is a well-known and respected temple even among non-Jews and the synagogue in Alessandria is being renovated and restored and there's talk even in much smaller Moncalvo of restoring the very dilapidated Jewish cemetery outside town and transforming the old caretaker's house into a Jewish museum. Do you sense from your travels and research that Italy is refocusing on the Jewish history in the country?
MDR: I can't speak for all Italy. I know that the congregation in Cuneo (also in Piedmont) is renovating their synagogue, and I promised that if I get a movie deal for "A Thread Of Grace," I'll help with that! It will be interesting to see the reaction to this novel if the book is published in Italian. My sense is that nobody talks much about the war -- there was a civil war after the world war ended, and there seems to be a tacit agreement not to talk about it much, precisely so that civil society could be reestablished. But in the seven years of research I did for this book, I have yet to find a single instance where a Jew was turned over or ratted out, and I have heard of only a tiny handful of genuine Italian anti-semites, who never got much traction for their hatreds. The story of Italy's response to the Holocaust is something to take pride in, and maybe "A Thread Of Grace" will start a conversation among the generations about this era.
Mary Doria Russell will read from "A Thread of Grace" at Schwartz Bookshop in Brookfield, Thursday, March 10 at 7 p.m.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
