Devotion
LOUISA YOUNG

This moving and vivid historical novel is set in Italy and London between 1928 and 1939 and cleverly interleaves the personal and the political, portraying the conflicts of loyalty produced by troubled times with great subtlety.

Tom and Kitty Locke are a brother and sister who in the course of the story grow from schoolchildren to adulthood. They are brought up by adoptive parents Nadine and Riley, though their shell-shocked and widowed natural father Peter is still on the scene. Taken for summer trips to stay with Nadine’s Jewish cousins in Rome, the adolescents find their ordinary difficulties compounded by the revelation of the Fascist sympathies of Aldo, the head of the Italian family.