I'm Staying Here

 I’m Staying Here by Marco Balzano (translated from the Italian by Jill Foulston)  224 Pages

If you like suspense, I think you’ll enjoy “I’m Staying Here.” The book has a quiet suspense that builds with every sentence. This also caused some weird feelings as I read it because a mother, Trina, is narrating this story to her long-lost daughter, Marcia. I knew that Trina would address Marcia as “you,” but it always unnerved me.

The story opens in 1923 as the flames of Fascism begin to rise. Seventeen-year-old Trina lives in the small community of Curon in South Tyrol, in the annexed Austrian territory. She has qualified to teach, but Mussolini has outlawed German, Trina’s native language, as a teaching language. She goes underground, teaching wherever she can.

In 1939, as Hitler and his Nazism expand, Germany offers the people of Curon a choice. They can participate in the “Great Option,” ---leave Italy and join the Reich. The town is divided and afraid. Trina and her family decide to stay, that is their home. At one point they try to escape, but climbing the mountains to reach Switzerland is treacherous. Not only the physical strength required but also by the emotional and psychological strength to hide from the Russians and the Nazis. What is home and what makes a place a home is at the heart of this novel. It is something that Trina and her family wrestle with as the novel progresses.

I’m Staying Here receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.