‘We Were the Lucky Ones' author revisits WWII Europe with less satisfying results

Los Angeles Times

24-02-2025

Georgia Hunter's 2017 debut novel, 'We Were the Lucky Ones,' recounted the seemingly miraculous survival of a Polish Jewish family during the Holocaust. Faithfully adapted into an excellent Hulu limited series, the panoramic tale hewed closely to the details of Hunter's own improbable family history, highlighting instances of fortitude, resourcefulness and luck.
Despite occasionally pedestrian prose, the novel was a swift read that, like a memoir, drew power from its authenticity. In that respect, it was a hard act to follow.
Hunter's second novel, 'One Good Thing,' shares similar settings and themes, along with a propulsive narrative. But it is a more conventional work of historical fiction, and less satisfying as a result.
Its central story, about a young woman and toddler in flight through war-ravaged Italy, is an invention. Ancillary characters, such as Italian cycling champion and Resistance hero Gino Bartali, have real-life counterparts. In an author's note, Hunter suggests that Lili, her fictional protagonist,was partly inspired by her mother as well as the author herself, and that Lili's (too-good-to-be-true) love interest incorporates characteristics of Hunter's father and husband, 'two of the kindest, most loving men I know.'
But the story's many twists and hair's-breadth escapes — its devolution into a Holocaust picaresque — lack the foundation of historical truth that undergirded the writer's debut effort.
'One Good Thing' arguably has one advantage over its predecessor: 'We Were the Lucky Ones' juxtaposed alternating narratives involving two parents, five siblings and various spouses and partners. The plethora of characters made for some confusion. In this new novel, the author focuses mainly on the challenges of one woman trying to find refuge in World War II Italy.
The book begins as a testament to various forms of love, but especially to the bond between two Jewish best friends living in Italy: Lili and her more assertive Greek pal from university, Esti. It's December 1940, and Europe is already at war; Mussolini's government has enacted anti-Jewish racial laws, and Esti is giving birth. With her husband Niko away, only Lili is there to get her to a hospital.
Theo is born at an inopportune time for Jews, whose rights are increasingly circumscribed in the country. A planned beach getaway by Lili and Esti implodes when a hotel clerk refuses to honor their reservation, a foreshadowing of far worse indignities to come.
Both Niko and Esti connect with the Italian underground. Niko returns to Salonica, Greece, in an effort to help his parents, while Esti becomes a champion document forger, providing her family, Lili and others with false 'Aryan' papers that will prove crucial to their survival. In Niko's absence, she and Theo move in with Lili, and together they relocate to the town of Nonantola to help refugee children.
They confront Allied bombs, German persecution, Italian collaboration and hunger. Priests and nuns are mostly helpful, but not always. Italy's allegiances — first to the Axis powers, then to the Allies — shift and fragment with the tides of war and politics. As one character notes, it's hard to keep up.
As Italian Jews are being rounded up and deported by the Germans (with an assist from local fascists), the two friends find their way to Florence. Esti's skills are in demand. But when thugs invade the convent where they are hiding, Esti, trying to help another woman, suffers a near-fatal beating. Fearing another raid, she begs Lili to leave the convent — with Theo in tow. She promises to meet them in Assisi when she recovers.
What is a best friend to do? A reluctant Lili assents. From the convent, she and Theo travel — by train, truck and bike, and too often on foot — from one hiding place to another, where they are helped by a series of good Samaritans, Resistance sympathizers and partisan fighters. The underground network holds. For a toddler, Theo behaves surprisingly well, and Lili eases nicely into the maternal role.
After Lili and Theo reach Assisi, she receives bad news: the thugs have returned to the convent and taken her friend away.
Each hardship and adventure that Lili faces bleeds into the next, with moments of respite and, occasionally, better food. Over time, she grows stronger, physically and psychologically.
After a stint in the forest with partisans, Lili and Theo arrive in Rome, settling into a safe house apartment. There, Hunter, clearly a romantic at heart, provides her heroine with a potential partner: an American soldier, Thomas, whom Lili meets on the city's streets. Separated from his regiment in the fighting, Thomas was captured by the enemy but has tunneled his way out of prison. Now it is Lili's turn to provide a hiding place.
The attraction simmers. 'She's never met anyone so helpful or so honest — with himself or with her,' Hunter writes. 'Someone so comfortable in his skin.' The three of them become an impromptu family. And family, as her readers know, is everything to Hunter.
Even as the war tips in the Allies' favor and Rome is liberated, Lili and Theo's peregrinations aren't over. There are more reunions, including with Lili's long-absent father. There is also loss, or at least the likelihood of loss. And, finally, as for many in Hunter's own family, a rose-tinged American future.
Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.