The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

First published 2016

Amazon

4.1(5,588)

Naples, 1945. Italy has been devastated by war and occupation, and British and American forces are trying to restore order amid ruined streets, shortages and political uncertainty. Caterina Lombardi has lost her father, her mother is missing and her brother is being pulled towards danger. When an Allied officer accuses her dead father of treason, she becomes determined to clear his name.

Caterina's search exposes a web of wartime loyalties, black-market survival and family deception reaching beneath the bombed city into Naples's ancient tunnels. The end of fighting has not produced security: old enemies remain, new authorities have arrived and private acts committed during occupation still have consequences. The novel explores liberation as an unstable transition rather than a clean ending to the Italian war.