In October of 1943, Chiara Ravello makes eye contact with a stranger, a Jewish mother being forced by the Nazis into a truck with her family and other Jews. Giving almost no thought to her actions, Chiara cries out that the woman's seven-year-old son, Daniele, is her nephew. He should be released to her.
Once he is, Chiara realizes she's saddled herself with the responsibility of a little boy in the midst of a devastatingly dangerous war.
Thirty years later, Chiara receives a letter from a Welsh teenager claiming to be Daniele's daughter. The girl's mother hid her father's identity until recently, and now she's desperate to learn what she can about her biological parent. The contact is jarring to Chiara, who has not seen Daniele in many years. She doesn't know if the man she once took in as her own child is even alive. Chiara locked away her love for Daniele, forced by circumstances to accept its agonizing conditions of disappointment and betrayal. But his daughter is unrelenting, so Chiara decides the time is right to face that love and all of its baggage once again.
Virginia Baily (Africa Junction) tells Chiara and Daniele's heartbreaking story by alternating between the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1973. She doles it out in small doses, allowing the reader to digest slowly the individual struggles at a time when the world seemed to be falling apart around them.
A complex exploration of identity, a tribute to love in its many shapes and sizes, Early One Morning shapes beauty from pain while compassionately touching its readers' hearts. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts