Georgia Hunter & Mary Morris
view optionsGeorgia Hunter, One Good Thing: A Novel
Mary Morris, The Red House: A Novel
From Georgia Hunter, the New York Times-bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones, comes a propulsive and heart-wrenching story of a young woman entrusted with a boy’s life as WWII rages in Italy.
1940, Italy. Lili and Esti have been best friends since they first met at university. When Esti’s son Theo is born, they become as close as sisters. While a war seethes across borders, life somehow goes on—until Germany invades Italy, and the friends suddenly find themselves in occupied territory.
Esti, older and fiercely self-assured, convinces Lili to join the resistance efforts. But when disaster strikes, a critically wounded Esti asks Lili to take a much bigger step: To go on the run with Theo. Protect him while Esti can’t.
Terrified to travel on her own, Lili sets out with Theo on a harrowing journey south toward Allied territory, braving Nazi-occupied villages and bombed-out cities, doing everything she can to keep the boy safe.
A remarkable tale of friendship, romance, motherhood, and survival, One Good Thing reminds us what is worth fighting for—and that love, even amidst a world in ruins, can triumph.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
When Georgia Hunter was fifteen years old, she discovered that she came from a family of Holocaust survivors. Years later, she embarked on a journey of intensive research, determined to unearth and record her family’s remarkable story. The result was the New York Times bestseller We Were the Lucky Ones, which has been published in over twenty languages and adapted for television by Hulu as a highly acclaimed limited series. One Good Thing is Georgia’s second novel. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two sons.
MARY MORRIS, The Red House: A Novel
Award-winning novelist Mary Morris weaves together an unsolved family mystery, a poignant coming-of-age story, and a little-known corner of World War II history in this lyrical novel of family, loss and, ultimately, love.
Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found, and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant.
Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage and her life, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II. Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage.
In Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother’s lost years. She is certain that the paintings of the red house hold the answer to her mother’s past and her search takes her from her hometown of Brindisi, deep into Puglia where she encounters a man who knew her mother and who illuminates little-known secrets of Italy’s Second World War.
Blending elements of true crime with settings that evoke Elena Ferrante, Laura follows her mother’s trajectory as she ventures north to Naples, Turin and finally home. Along the way, she confronts the dark truth of her mother's story and at last makes sense of her own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Morris is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels Gateway to the Moon, The Jazz Palace, A Mother's Love, and House Arrest, and of nonfiction, including the travel classic Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone. Morris is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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All sales are final. Tickets and books are non-refundable.
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date
Georgia Hunter & Mary Morris
Wednesday, 11.12.2025 - 11.12.2025 (1 session)
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time
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm |
location MJCCA Zaban Park | fee Member: $15, Community: $20 | age 18 - 110 Years | code #58878 | Buy Tickets |
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