The setting is Northern Italy during the Second World War. Russell picks up the disrupted lives of Jewish refugees escaping persecution and of the people who shelter them. Keeping a tight focus on a small number of individuals illustrates the beauty of each life, each thread. Russell's quiet matter-of-fact voice suffuses each tragedy with a significance that no other tone could match, each character with an almost palpable nobility that makes the pages feel alive. Through these few lives and deaths we begin to get a small sense of the unimaginable horror of WWII, of war itself.
"A Thread of Grace" is often brutal--not gory, but its simple everyday narration is merciless. This is a book that will haunt me.