Set against war-torn Italy, One Good Thing, has the promise of a great novel. The deeply researched, potentially thrilling plot -- about a young Jewish woman who must relinquish her toddler to her best friend-- unfortunately didn’t float my boat. I was initially intrigued by author Georgia Hunter’s new fiction. Her earlier work, the enormously fascinating biography We Were The Lucky Ones was a wonderful read. I anticipated her historical fiction would become another a magnum opus. However after a compelling hundred pages the narrative morphed into a travelogue of unsurprising vignettes.

Greek nationals, Esti and Nik Ezratti first met Italian born Lili Passigli at Ferrara University. The girls became closer than sisters. Lili attended Esti’s wedding and the birth of her baby boy, Theo, in 1940. Though Europe was on fire with antisemitism, Esti was unfazed by the political changes that surrounded Jews in Italy, confident, “it’s all Il Duce’s theatrics” certain it will “blow over.” Esti put her trust in the “mercy of the Pope” to protect Italy’s Jews. Lili was not so sure. Mussolini’s Racial laws of 1938 had already reduced Jews to second class status. All too soon the war came to Italy overrun by the Wehrmacht, every place unsafe for Jews. Esti awakens to the new reality as Nik flees Italy compelled to save his parents from the carnage in Nazi occupied Salonika.

Fast forward to 1943. Esti joins the resistance creating fake ID’s for Jews. When Ferrara becomes too dangerous, the two women and Theo, armed with Esti’s forged Aryan documents, relocate to the countryside sequestering in the village orphanage. Esti becomes invaluable to the counterfeiters creating false IDs; Lili takes care of Theo. Assisted by the “staunchly antifascist,” Cardinal Dalla Costa the two women and Theo hide in a Florentine convent. However an unexpected onslaught on the convent leaves Esti brutally beaten, unable to flee. She begs Lili to take her son and run. Reluctantly, Lili becomes Theo’s surrogate mother.

Lili and Theo travel south from Florence to Assisi to Rome heading toward Allied territory expecting to unite with Este. Dodging checkpoints, ducking Allied bombings overhead and Italian “carabinieri,” the Italian secret police on the ground, Lili and Theo join a partisan group for temporary shelter. As Lili grows in strength from a fun- loving university student she gains stature as a loyal friend and a fiercely protective, responsible mother who must grapple with more than eluding the perils of the fascist enemy when she loses little Theo, in Rome a city overrun by Nazis.

One Good Thing illuminates the Jewish history of Nazi persecution in Italy’s Jewish communities during its darkest days of the Holocaust. Significant in the novel is the historically accurate role played by compassionate Christian antifascist clergy who saved many Jewish lives.