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Filled with heartache and romance, The Forgotten Italian Restaurant, published last August by Scarsdale-based author Barbara Josselsohn, tells the wartime story of Emilia, a heroic young girl living in Caccipulia who decides, despite her terror, to believe in the future.
Caught in the crosshairs of the Nazi occupation during World War II, the villagers face restrictions and food shortages, but they are resilient, trading on the black market, finding ways to hide and feed Jews, and secretly helping them escape. Josselsohn adeptly moves the multigenerational story between past and present as modern-day Callie travels from the U.S. to Italy, where she unravels her Nonna’s wartime secrets.
The book is the third in Josselsohn’s historical fiction series [Secrets of the Italian Island and The Lost Gift to the Italian Island, both published in 2023] about three sisters separated during World War II. It is rich with themes of family and love, and vivid descriptions of Italian vistas and food—from the sparse wartime fare to the bounty of contemporary Italian bakeries—as it reveals the very human motivation to feed and otherwise nourish people in need.
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A journalist turned novelist, Josselsohn teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Westport Writers Workshop, and her local library, where she created the Scarsdale Library Writing Center.
