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Overview: What turning point makes you decide to risk your life to bring about change?

Emma Mendes was a girl from an upper-class Venetian family; she led a comfortable life. She was the eldest daughter of one of the few professional couples in 1930s Venice and planned to become a lawyer like her mother. Then, in 1938, Fascist Italy passed racial laws discriminating against Jews, and her world changed dramatically. Her family's immediate reaction was to adjust and do whatever they could to keep as much of their lifestyle as possible. Emma’s future prospects significantly changed. She could not continue her education, so she was apprenticed to a dressmaker.

In September 1943, Nazi Germany included Italian Jews in the Final Solution; the family must leave Venice to survive. Emma and her mother decide to join the Resistance. Their ability to keep calm and stay in control sees them through many tense moments. Emma unexpectedly meets a young Jewish man who will become her husband. When the Allied army reaches the Veneto region, the Mendes family returns to Venice, starts rebuilding their lives, and finds out who did not make it.

Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics