A House in the Mountains

In the months between the fall of Mussolini’s Fascist government in 1943 and the Allied victory in 1945, the people of Turin and the Italian Piedmont suffered tremendously. Caught between invading Germans, Fascist groups reasserting control, and the Allied bombing campaign, thousands of Italians took to the hills to survive. Moorehead (A Bold and Dangerous Family), in the final book of her “Resistance Quartet” series tells the incredible story of the stafetta, women of the Italian resistance. The staffetta worked a variety of jobs within the partisan groups; transporting explosives and weapons and serving as lookouts as well as mending clothes and cooking for fighters. Many women also rose into the leadership ranks of the partisans. Despite the sacrifices many of these women made, including with their lives, it was decades before they received the recognition they deserved as combatants and for the role they played in liberating Italy from Fascist and Nazi rule. Based on extensive archival research, this is a fine history that centers women in the story of the Italian resistance.