Finding Love In the Midst of War: The Untold Story of the Abandoned Soldier

“In wartime we don't know what's going to happen so we grab any happiness while there's still time."As soon as my mother stepped outside, the rumble of a low-flying airplane made her look up. She was not the only one. There were people out on balconies looking at the sky and cheering. As airplane after airplane flew past, black shapes fell from their underbellies, followed by booming explosions and clouds of smoke. The falling objects were bombs! As Mom ran through the streets, she could see a building in the distance crumbling to the pavement. There was screaming, smoke, and debris everywhere.The bombing lasted seven months. Then came one of the coldest winters on record. Inflation was rampant. Mom’s family was forced to cut back and live on whatever they could grow themselves. Finally, Greece surrendered and German troops advanced into the country. Italian soldiers came too, and fraternized with the Greeks. My father was one of them, and he spent his days pursuing my mom. After Italy's surrender in 1943, my mother’s family hid my father, and my parents married later that year.Finding Love in the Midst of War is a memoir of love in the midst of unspeakable chaos, change, and tribulation. It is also an immigrant story, about a young family’s struggles to adapt to a new country, customs, and language.It is my story—and it might be your story, too.