The Orphan from Verona

 The Orphan from Verona

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       August 16, 2026

 

Author  Siobhan Daiko

Distributor:      Amazon
ISBN:                 978-1836331131
Publisher:         Boldwood Books
Release Date:   14 August 2026  

   Website:   https://www.amazon.com.au/Girl-Verona-Siobhan-Daiko/dp/1836331134

FaceBook:   https://www.facebook.com/boldwoodbooks/ 

YouTube:   

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/boldwoodbooks/ 

X Formally Twitter:   https://twitter.com/BoldwoodBooks 

Verona, Italy May, 1944; a time when Verona was being bombed nightly by Allied forces, people were living in terror from the bombing by night and the German Army by day. But when you are five years old, and Mamma and Papi, along with brother Roberto are keeping you safe, life is manageable, until it is not.

With their home demolished, their parents dead and the Germans looking out for able bodied young men to conscript into the army, Eliza and Robi must seek safe shelter, which is far from easy in a city that lives in fear.

It is now 2000 in New York where Elisa has spent more than fifty years of her life, building a successful career as an Architect and latterly an artist. Mourning the death of her beloved husband, she tells her daughter Claudia she is going to return to Verona to see if she can find any trace of her brother Robi.

Claudia is astonished to discover she may have an Uncle but has reservations about returning to a place that she loved that had caused her terrible heartache. Nevertheless, she agrees to go with her mother on her pilgrimage into the past, a past Eliza had never really spoken about.

The Orphan from Verona is a heart wrenching tale of love, loss and hope as the tragedy of German occupation in Verona unfolds and the horror of wartime is bought to life through the eyes of a little girl and then an older woman, as she desperately seeks to discover whether the bother she loved is still alive or died as a member of the Resistance movement.

This is a story of the people who survived the German occupation, not knowing if beloved family members survived, many never knowing, which makes the tale of The Orphan from Verona very poignant.

Fiction, General, Historical