WOMEN OF WAR

Risking their lives for their country.

Journalist and New York University writing professor Cope, a granddaughter of Italian immigrants, portrays the defiance of the Italian Resistance through the lives of four intrepid women. Each in her 20s when Fascism took hold in Italy, Carla Capponi, Teresa Mattei, Anita Malavasi, and Bianca Guidetti Serra were among tens of thousands of women who took part in armed resistance and hundreds of thousands of other women who provided material support. Drawing on memoirs, interviews, and personal testimonies along with historical and archival sources, Cope focuses on two crucial years, beginning in the spring of 1943, during which Italy surrendered to the Allies, Germany occupied the country, and the Resistance became increasingly militant. In concise chapters, she recounts the events of the war month by month: in Rome, where Carla’s residence served as a safe house, welcoming those who knew the password; in Florence, where Teresa, the daughter of longtime anti-Fascists, lived with her family; in Turin, where Bianca had grown up in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood; and in the small northern city of Reggio Emilia, surrounded by farmland, where Anita lived. As Resistance fighters amassed in the hills and mountains around central and northern Italy, the women brought them clothing, food, and arms. They wrote, printed, and disseminated manifestos and calls for strikes. They carried bombs. The risks were great: arrest, torture, rape, execution. They put not only their own lives, but those of their families, in danger. But they felt they had no choice. Like the others, Carla realized “there was no turning back to her previous life where she would stare out the window, waiting for the war to end. Instead, she would be on the front lines, fighting for her beloved city and a different, free future.”

An inspiring, illuminating group biography.