One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter

Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025--San Antonio

One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter surprised me by how much I enjoyed it.  Set in Italy during WWII and dealing with the consequences of actions by the Fascists against Jews, I worried that it could be the same old, same old.  But it proved I didn't know that much about WWII in Italy.  I didn't know that it was years into the war before it became a big problem for Jewish residents there.  I didn't know about the resistance to Mussolini that caused him to be jailed for a time.  The story of this book revolves around 3 main characters--a native of Italy who is Jewish, her best friend who is Jewish and married to a man from Greece, and the very young son from that marriage.  The husband from Greece leaves the story early on to return to Greece to try save his parents.  So that leaves just the 2 women and the boy and all the people they meet on a short-time basis as their story happens.  They go on a journey from town-to-town built around trying to stay safe from the German soldiers and the Italian Black Shirts.  They are also involved in underground efforts for creating and delivering false IDs that "disguise" the Jews as being Aryans in an effort to keep them safe.  I just kept wanting to read more and more without putting the book down.  It is a novel, so it is a fictional story, but it is based on known stories of people and events from the war and even includes some real characters in "cameo" appearances based on what is known about their actions during the war.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.