SAVING THE MUSIC

In this historical novel, Jewish musicians running from the Nazis are helped by Roman Catholic priests in a Sicilian village during World War II.

In 1942, Pope Pius XII finds himself in a precarious position, torn between a desire to denounce the atrocities committed by the Nazi and Soviet militaries and the importance of maintaining the Vatican’s neutrality, which allows it to become a sanctuary for Jewish refugees. While rhetorically cautious, the pope acts with great boldness, encouraging Catholic priests to help disenfranchised Jews. LoCoco astutely creates a story about a plan devised with the Vatican’s imprimatur, a scheme to hide Jewish musicians in the fictional Bellafortuna, a Sicilian village with a reputation for its “immense passion for music.” But this is a perilous undertaking—the Jews will hide in plain sight, posing as Italians, assuming new identities, and learning rudimentary Italian. The tale focuses on three Jewish musicians—Alfred Keller, Heinrich Bergman, and Kurt Hofmann—who narrowly escaped death at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen. The plot can devolve into an excess of sentimentality—Heinrich, a talented violinist, rediscovers the joy of music in Bellafortuna, a scene wrought with melodrama. He thanks Annika Adler, the wife of a composer, for helping him overcome his sadness about his mother’s death and reigniting his enthusiasm for music: “You have opened my heart to music again and to life, and you have brought to my mind the memory of my dear mother. For all of that, I am forever grateful.” But the book as a whole is impressively nuanced and articulates an account of the Catholic Church’s opposition to Hitler’s despotism not always accurately reflected in the historical literature. Instead of being cowardly or indifferent, the controversial Pope Pius is portrayed in this novel as diplomatically prudent as well as deeply constrained by the Vatican’s tenuous political power. The author’s fictional story about the musicians and his interpretation of the Vatican’s wartime actions are based on his research, including the “historical fact that Italians hid the Jews.” Whether or not this portrait of the pope is ultimately proved to be correct by historians, it is an impressively balanced one. The tale takes admirable pains to furnish readers with what LoCoco considers a fuller picture of the Vatican’s position during the war.

A historically bold and dramatically lively war tale.