The imagery featured within Our Darkest Night is intensely vivid, largely because Jennifer pulled inspiration from places she has actually visited, and people she has known closely, including her husband’s Italian family, some of whom were alive during the Holocaust. Taking place between 19, during the peak and eventual end of the war, Our Darkest Night follows the most challenging years of the Gerardi family’s lives in German-occupied Italy. Now as Nina Gerardi, she must make the grueling journey to Mezzo Ciel where she learns to adjust to life on the farm. Antonina must leave everything she’s ever known behind, including her name. Luckily for Antonina, Niccolò Gerardi, a kind-hearted Christian farmer, agrees to pose as her husband, concealing her secret and keeping her safe on his family farm in the Italian countryside. In October of 1942, as German troops begin arresting Jewish people in the cities of Italy at an alarming rate, Antonina Mazin’s father decides she must leave Venice. “I don’t think any book can ever capture the reality of what happened in the Holocaust… but I also don’t think that means that we shouldn’t try… so it’s kind of one of these things I went into it knowing I could never write a perfect book on this subject,” says Jennifer in a conversation, presentedby Harper Collins Canada, with Elizabeth Renzetti. This being her first novel based outside her usual settings in England and France, Jennifer approached the book with great sensitivity.

Jennifer Robson is a bestselling author of six novels, including The Gown, Moonlight Over Paris, and now with her recent book Our Darkest Night, she continues to captivate her audience through fiction inspired by European history. Jennifer obtained her doctorate in British economics and social history at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a full-time writer in Toronto.

This is interesting as not many books have been set in this part of war-torn Europe. Inspired by true events, Our Darkest Night is a story about selflessness, resilience, sacrifice, and love during German-occupied Italy throughout the Second World War.

Book review the gown by jennifer robson