Our Darkest Night by Jennifer Robson

In a literary field filled with fiction on World War II, is there room for one more book?  If it’s Jennifer Robson’s new novel, the answer is a resounding yes.

By mid-war in Italy, the Jewish residents of Venice were still fairly insulated from the brutalities faced by other Jews in Europe, but Dr. Gabriele Mazin was keenly aware that his family’s life was in imminent danger.   His wife, who lived in a casa di riposo, a nursing home, was too ill to leave the city, and he would never leave her and his patients, but he was determined that his only child, his daughter Antonina in her early 20s, would go to a safe place to live out the war.  

One of Dr. Mazin’s oldest friends, Father Bernardi from the little town of Mezzo Ciel in northern Italy, suggests that Antonina come with him and live as a farm wife to a young man he knew.  Antonina is heartsick about leaving her beloved parents, sad about leaving behind her medical studies with her father, and terrified to enter a world she knows nothing about.  

From farm chores to attending mass to living in a room with Nico Gerardi, the man she meets the day he takes her away, is a trial to Antonina—now Nina Gerardi.  Work in the house and the fields is long and hard, and Nico’s sister Rosa doesn’t intend to make it any easier for Nina, whose appearance was a total surprise to the family and assured a complete halt to Nico’s interrupted seminary studies to enter the priesthood.  

Although danger lurks in many places, Nina manages to navigate them through her growing friendship with Nico.  When Nico’s former adversary in seminary, now the German officer Obersturmfurhrer Zwerger, arrives in the village to taunt and bully Nico, he is immediately suspicious of his bride and puts Nina to many ongoing tests.

Our Darkest Night is told in third person in Nina’s point of view.  Its chronological telling adds suspense to the story, in part because the reader understands certain things about the war, including the import of being herded onto a train.  

The fact that the author was able to interview people from her husband’s family and village about their war experiences and everyday life adds a deep authenticity to the story.  Never a rote recitation, everyday life is beautifully described, and the hardships are not sugar coated.  The language is often poetic, even in the harshest circumstances.  Descriptions, character development, language, pacing all add up to an engrossing and memorable novel.  

(Wm. Morrow, January 5, 2021)

My advance copy came from a Goodreads giveaway.