This nov­el, inspired by real peo­ple and real events, plunges us into Genoa in 1944, when Ger­mans are prowl­ing the city, seek­ing Jews to deport to con­cen­tra­tion camps. Anna, a Jew­ish wid­ow, and Vit­to­rio, a Jesuit priest, nar­rate the sto­ry in alter­nate chapters.

Anna, alone, hid­den in a small room in some­one else’s apart­ment, owes a month’s rent and has no means of sup­port. She is down to her last can of sar­dines when the air-raid siren sounds. Despite her ter­ror of being spot­ted, she dash­es out of the apart­ment to an under­ground pub­lic shel­ter where she will spend the night. Also in the shel­ter is Father Vit­to­rio, a Jesuit priest, who is part of an under­ground net­work of peo­ple help­ing Jews escape to Switzer­land. Their meet­ing changes both lives. Father Vit­to­rio brings Anna to a safe house where she will live and help forge iden­ti­ty papers. The two work side by side along with a man called Mr. X, whom Anna knows is Mas­si­mo Tegli, a suc­cess­ful avi­a­tor. He secret­ly works for DELASEM, a real orga­ni­za­tion famous for sav­ing Jews from cap­ture and cer­tain death. An unusu­al love tri­an­gle devel­ops between Anna, Vit­to­rio, and Tegli.

Through­out the nov­el, Anna and Vit­to­rio reflect on past deci­sions that brought them to where they are now. Grad­u­al­ly, we learn the sto­ries of their lives. Once Anna’s father, a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, was fired for refus­ing to sign a loy­al­ty oath, he and the rest of Anna’s fam­i­ly fled to Amer­i­ca. They tried to per­suade Anna to join them but she, mar­ried to a Catholic uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent with a promis­ing future, decides to wait for her hus­band to fin­ish his stud­ies and save enough mon­ey for the two of them to immi­grate to the US as a cou­ple. These plans went awry.

Father Vit­to­rio real­izes that his com­mit­ment to the church was part­ly a way of escap­ing his father. Now, seri­ous­ly ill (though in denial), Vit­to­rio wavers in his com­mit­ment. Tegli, a wid­ow­er, is try­ing to use his inter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions and pres­tige to help and pro­tect his people.

Sus­pense, dra­ma, romance, and ful­ly believ­able char­ac­ters com­bine to keep the read­er turn­ing pages. Daugh­ter of Genoa is not only a com­pelling sto­ry, but also an impor­tant reminder that the decen­cy and brav­ery of ordi­nary cit­i­zens, such as the cou­ple who hide Anna, saved thou­sands of lives in Italy — one rea­son why few­er Ital­ian Jews, com­pared to those in the rest of Europe, were cap­tured and mur­dered dur­ing the Holocaust.