Ed

A Thread of Grace

"A million deaths is a statistic", but every death -- and life -- has its tale. Mary Doria Russell weaves a dark but rich tapestry quietly filled with not one but countless threads of grace.

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.