The Story Behind The Girl Who Escaped

Wendy reviews books set in Italy. For more articles like this one, subscribe to her Substack channel Italy Writers and get in touch via Sunflower Publishing. Read more.

Some novels go beyond telling a story — they bear witness. The Girl Who Escaped, Angela Petch’s haunting World War II novel published by Bookouture in April 2023, is one such book. Rooted in the overlooked histories of wartime Italy, it explores not only acts of quiet resistance but the murkier spaces where fear, love, and survival blur moral lines. It is a novel that lingers — in the mind, in the heart, in the silences between pages.

When I spoke with Angela, it was clear the story still lived within her. “I think I found this the hardest book,” she admitted. “I still feel quite drained from it.”

How Far Would You Go?

At the heart of the novel is a question that haunts many wartime narratives but is rarely given such moral complexity: what do you do when the right thing might endanger your family? “I often ask myself the question, what would I have done?” Angela said. “Would I have been able to do what they did? I don’t think you really know until you’re in that situation.”

Her Italian grandfather-in-law — known affectionately as Nonno Gigi — was one such man. “He wasn’t young,” she said, “he already had two children when he helped the resistance.” Angela recounted a night when Gigi brought a partisan into their flat — which happened to be directly opposite the German headquarters in Urbino. “His wife went berserk,” Angela said. “‘He can’t stay here, we’ve got children!’ But she let him stay that night.”

It’s one thing to imagine sheltering someone in a cellar. “But in your own flat?” she asked. “Opposite the enemy?”

A Story of Flawed People

Angela’s characters aren’t paragons. They’re human — tender, conflicted, sometimes cruel. Take Devorah, the novel’s young protagonist, who becomes infatuated with a man who betrays her. “She’s a young girl,” Angela explained. “I can remember being infatuated with people I shouldn’t have been infatuated with… I hadn’t grown up yet.”

Even Sabrina, a friend who seems to manoeuvre herself for gain, reflects uncomfortable truths. “She’s very flaky,” Angela admitted. “She’s just going to befriend the right people at the right time to get the most out of the war. But there are people like that.”

Angela doesn’t shy away from the ethical murk. “There were women who slept with the enemy because their children were starving,” she said. “Her [Sabrina’s] family wasn’t starving, so that’s different. But still — I don’t want to be judgemental. I don’t know what I would have done.”

Faith, Silence, and Survival

One of the most compelling threads in The Girl Who Escaped is the nuanced treatment of religion — not just as a spiritual force but as identity, as silence, and sometimes, as survival. Angela herself was raised in a strict Catholic household. “I have my ideas about religion,” she said. “And I think some of them went into Devorah’s opinions.”

The novel doesn’t flinch from controversy — including the silence of the Pope during the Holocaust. “He didn’t speak out about the Jews,” Angela noted. “And yet we know that many were hidden in convents and monasteries. Assisi in particular had a very strong underground.”

She almost changed the novel’s setting to Assisi for that reason. “But in the end, I thought — no. I want to write about Urbino because it’s more personal.”

The Box in the Attic

After Nonno died, Angela’s husband found a box of old correspondence. “Nonno was very meticulous,” she said. “He kept loads of letters — including one he wrote to Mussolini himself, asking for help because his wife was ill.”

Among the papers was something even more extraordinary: a medal. “He was awarded by the government for being an active partisan,” she said. “Morris [her husband] was in tears. He made little frames for each of our children — with a photo of Nonno and an explanation of what he did.”

These weren’t just family heirlooms. They were calls to remember. “There must be thousands of stories like this,” Angela said. “That just get forgotten because someone throws out a box of papers.”

Writing Towards the End

Angela often begins her books at the end. “I actually wrote the last chapter first,” she told me. “I knew how I wanted it to end. But it changed along the way.” The opening — a faded black-and-white photograph — came much later. “I wanted to show how people change,” she explained. “If you present them as they are halfway through life, and then go back, you see how they developed.”

A Forgotten Chapter of History

During her research, Angela came across a plaque at Villa Oliveto, once an internment camp. “It mentioned Polish and British Jews being imprisoned there,” she said. “And I thought — British Jews? What were they doing here?”

That question led her to Libya, then an Italian colony. “When the British took Benghazi, they abolished racial laws and gave citizenship to many Libyan Jews. But when the Germans came back, those same Jews were rounded up.”

It was then that the character of Shira was born.

Walking Through Memory

To write the novel, Angela walked the cobbled streets of Urbino, filming videos for her readers: “This is where she would have walked… this is the ghetto… here’s the synagogue.” It helped her write. “The synagogue isn’t used anymore,” she said. “But the lady who showed us round was lovely. She said it was requisitioned — first by the Germans, then the British. They even burned books to keep warm. I felt guilty when she said that.”

Angela used that home — and that anecdote — as the setting for one of the book’s most poignant scenes.

Beyond the War

Now, Angela is ready for a shift. “I don’t want to become formulaic,” she said. “I’m known now for WWII novels set in Italy. But I want to see whether I can write something else.”

She’s already written a very different book — Mavis and Dot, a gentle comedy — and has a half-written sequel waiting in the wings. “I used to love writing short stories too,” she added. “I just need a bit of a break from the Second World War.”

But one thing is certain: whatever she writes next will carry the same emotional charge, the same devotion to forgotten stories, the same care for the human soul.

As Angela put it, simply and beautifully, “I wrote The Girl Who Escaped in honour of the Italians. A homage to every family who helped someone.”

For those readers who crave stories grounded in truth, threaded with emotional honesty, and written from the heart, The Girl Who Escaped is a novel to treasure.