The Italian Prisoner by Elisa M. Speranza

Meanwhile, Laura was an Army nurse stationed in North Africa, which seemed impossibly romantic to Rose. Giovanni had enlisted right after Pearl Harbor and now worked as a mechanic somewhere in the Pacific. She knew her big brother Giovanni and older sister Laura were wearing theirs too, wherever they were the thought brought Rose some solace. She felt through her blouse for her scapular, a drawing of the Virgin Mary on a small brown felt rectangle, tied to a ribbon she wore around her neck. The lie was just a venial sin, she rationalized.

She’d told her parents she was going to a blood drive. Instead, she was headed to a job interview at the Higgins Shipyard. Rose wasn’t where she should be on a Friday morning: working at the family grocery store. Rose craned her neck from her seat in the back but couldn’t identify her. An older woman knelt up front, dressed in black and murmuring prayers in Sicilian as she worked her rosary beads.

The church custodian moved silently around the altar, focused on his dusting and polishing.

The early morning light shining through the stained-glass windows made little prisms of color on the pews the cloying smell of incense transported Rose to comforting childhood times. Rose looked around the church, hoping not to run into the pastor or anyone else she knew. Inspired by little-known historical events and set to a swing-era soundtrack, The Italian Prisoner is an engrossing story of wartime love, family secrets, and a young woman’s struggle to chart her own course at an inflection point in American history. When Rose gets a promotion at work, she must make an agonizing choice: follow a traditional path like Marie or keep working after the war and live on her own terms. Italy has switched sides in the war, so the POWs are allowed out to socialize, giving Rose and Sal a chance to grow closer. There, Rose falls for Sal, a handsome and intelligent POW. When the parish priest organizes a goodwill mission to visit Italian prisoners of war at a nearby military base, Rose and her vivacious best friend, Marie, join the group. Behind her parents’ back, Rose lands a job at the shipyard, where she feels free and important for the first time in her life. But she secretly dreams of being more like her fiercely independent widowed godmother. Her parents expect Rose to marry a local boy and start a family. Her older brother and sister both joined the Army, and Rose prays for their safety as World War II rages overseas. Rose Marino lives with her Sicilian immigrant parents and helps in the family grocery store.

The Italian Prisoner by Elisa M. Speranza