Book Spotlight and Excerpt: The Girl from Portofino (Girls of the Italian Resistance: A collection of standalone novels set in Italy during World War 2) by Siobhan Daiko

 

In 1970 Gina Bianchi returns to Portofino to attend her father’s funeral, accompanied by her troubled twenty-four-year-old daughter, Hope. There, Gina is beset by vivid memories of World War 2, a time when she fought with the Italian Resistance and her twin sister, Adele, worked for the Germans.

In her childhood bedroom, Gina reads Adele’s diary, left behind during the war. As Gina learns the devastating truth about her sister, she’s compelled to face the harsh brutality of her own past. Will she finally lay her demons to rest, or will they end up destroying her and the family she loves?

A hauntingly epic read that will sweep you away to the beauty of the Italian Riviera and the rugged mountains of its hinterland. “The Girl from Portofino” is a story about heart-wrenching loss and uplifting courage, love, loyalty, and secrets untold.

Trigger Warnings:

The brutality of war, death, war crimes against women.

 

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EXCERPT

Gina heaves a sigh and turns to the next page. Her sister’s voice is so compelling. She can almost hear her speaking. She grits her teeth and reads on.

10^th November 1943

Dear Diary

It has been over a month since I first wrote to you. A lot has happened, and I hardly know where to begin.

We have new residents in Portofino. Germans! A couple of weeks ago, they requisitioned the Nazionale Restaurant as a canteen for officers, billeted men in the villas of the wealthy, and have even taken over Castello Brown. The entire Portofino headland is being armed with antiaircraft and anti-naval batteries. It’s disgusting! Our beautiful Mount Portofino Park, created only eight years ago to preserve our unique flora, fauna, and landscape, has now become a place for aggression.

Oh, Dio buono, good Lord, it’s not just here in Portofino that we are suffering from the effects of the occupation. My entire country has turned into a war zone. Our King and the government have fled to Brindisi in the far south, which is in Allied hands. Italy has officially declared war on Germany. British and American forces have liberated Naples, but the Nazis have halted their advance south of Rome. It’s a complete and utter disaster.

Even worse, Hitler has made Mussolini, whom we’d thought we’d got rid of last summer, the ruler of “The Italian Social Republic”. He’s now based in Salò on Lake Garda, near Verona in the north. The Baroness told me that il Duce has become a puppet dancing to Germany’s tune. I grew up under his regime—we were indoctrinated into the cult of Mussolini at school—but I’d always thought him pompous and his cosying up to Hitler despicable. And now he has dropped Italy into an even deeper mess than he did when he sent our unprepared young men off to fight in North Africa and Russia. It's heart-breaking.

Some of the leading government figures who voted Mussolini out of power last July have been tried by a Fascist court and then executed by a firing squad. The Baroness said such a dreadful act is just the beginning of dark times ahead, and I’m afraid she’s right. Not only has our country become a battleground between Germany and the Allies, but also home to a war of national liberation.

Today, in the quiet of her study, the Baroness told me about the resistance movement. Anti-Fascist civilians are joining the partisan formations, established by soldiers from disbanded units of the Royal Italian Army, who’d evaded capture by the Germans after the armistice. And now a Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, Committee of National Liberation—also known as the CLN—has been set up behind enemy lines. So exciting, I said to her, catching the glow in her eyes, but to be honest, I’m worried. Anti-Fascist Italians will be fighting Fascist Italians as well as Nazis. If the Allies don’t get here soon, I fear that a lot of blood will be shed.

The British and Americans seem to be having more luck in the air than on land. There have been four major bombardments of Genoa by Allied planes since the Germans occupied the city. The aircraft fly low over Portofino. When they’ve dropped their bombs on their targets—the railway marshalling yards of the city, apparently—the sky turns red above us.

One piece of good news. We received a letter from my brother, Tommaso, yesterday. After being conscripted into the army, he was captured in Tunisia by the Allies last March. They sent him to a prisoner of war camp in England. But now, because Italy isn’t at war with Britain anymore, he has been given the chance to work as a “co-operator”. He mixes with local people in Yorkshire and is learning to speak English. I’m happy for him; it will broaden his horizons and help him make something of himself. (Tommaso has always been the apple of Mamma’s eye and she’s spoilt him rotten.)

Dio buono, I can hear Gina coming down the corridor to our bedroom so I’d better stop writing. She mustn’t know about you, dear diary. Mustn’t know about the Baroness. I’ll hide you quickly and try and share more secrets with you soon.

Siobhan Daiko

Siobhan Daiko is a British historical fiction author. A lover of all things Italian, she lives in the Veneto region of northern Italy with her husband, a Havanese dog, and two rescued cats. After a life of romance and adventure in Hong Kong, Australia, and the UK, Siobhan now spends her time, when she isn't writing, enjoying her life near Venice.

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