📚🔫🍝NOVEL THOUGHTS🍝🔫📚
The women whom the reader will meet in this very well researched book, are heroes of WWII and it's only now that the world gets to know of them. What they did as their country was in flux between the fall of Fascism, when Mussolini was holding hands with Hitler in this puppet government of Italy and the end of WWII, was truly extraordinary. Their sacrifices both physically and emotionally, their courage needed to face extreme moments, their cleverness to get them out of sticky moments and just plain luck, blows the mind. And they did it for country and family.
These women took on the fight as resistance fighters, as reporters to get their fellow Italians enraged and engaged at what was going on and to fight behind the scenes and as spies who, because they were women and thought to be on the sidelines while the men did all the heavy lifting, got messages to and from those in the field who would then be able to sabotage the enemy. And this was an important point: prior to the war, women were homemakers, wore dresses, had babies, were always pretty to look at and considered silly and stupid by the men around them. And this they used to their advantage all the while, trying to break that stereotype once the war was over. Like many women during wartime, they step into the factories to build weapons of war, help put food on the table, and once the men come home, they are expected to return to the demure women they were before the men left. But that is impossible to do if the job held was to make bombs, run messages into hostile territory, build airplanes or tanks or guns and bullets. This feeling of power through the respect they earned with their war jobs, changed them profoundly and they were not going to give that up when the men came home. In the field, these "staffetti", or couriers, had some of the most dangerous jobs as they had to run between friend and enemy lines to get messages through putting their lives at risk all the time, so why would they want to go backwards?? This theme is a strong one that plays all the way through the book.
The women who are featured in the book are only 4 who performed valiantly during the war, often without their families knowing what they are up to and sometimes not seeing their families for many months at at time but there were so many through out Italy.
Suzanne Cope does such an amazing job building the relationships and backgrounds for these women and others as she takes the reader through the time of Mussolini's 20 year Fascist reign and the climate of the time and then as WWII makes it's way to Italy. It is a powerfully written book, full of first hand accounts as written or spoken by the women she features. There are some downright shocking moments and a few special moments as well. These are some of the strongest, most admirable women from history that will be sure to make the reader want to applaud after closing the last page!