A gripping and meticulous new history shines a much-needed light on women in the Italian anti-Fascist resistance during World War II and how the resistance worked with the Allied forces to help end the war on European soil.

“Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis” by Suzanne Cope (Dutton/ Penguin Putnam) tells the stories of four spectacularly brave women who were instrumental in the fight against the Nazis during the German occupation of Italy, whose experiences illuminate the larger history of the war in Italy.

In early September 1943, Italy surrendered to the Allies. But the Nazis were prepared and quickly took over the country, aided by Italian Fascist loyalists. Grassroots resistance members began organizing immediately, and Italian women were integral to their efforts, serving as underground soldiers, intrepid spies, cunning saboteurs, and much more. Using primary sources and brand new scholarship, scholar and narrative journalist Suzanne Cope unearths the hidden history of the brave women who risked their lives to liberate Italy.

A recommended book by Smithsonian Magazine, also named by Kirkus Review as “a book that should really be a movie,” Women of War is both a meticulously-researched history and a riveting and dramatic read.

Cope is also the author of “Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement” and she is a professor at New York University. She was born and raised in Fredonia.

Cope is returning to her hometown on Thursday for an event at the Darwin R. Barker Library & Museum, starting at 6 p.m. She will read from and discuss her book, Women of War, with a reception with music from the period to follow. Books will be available for sale. There will also be an exhibit of photographs and publications from Cope’s research in Italy alongside local artifacts collected by Max Walters, curator for the Darwin R. Barker Historical Museum and a recreation of a partisan uniform by Matthew Sutton, President of the Dunkirk Historical Society.

Below is a brief Q&A with Suzanne about her experience researching and writing Women of War.

How did you choose the four women to primarily focus on?

I spent a year doing as much research as I could, forming a long list of potential protagonists.

These four women became the obvious choices for a number of reasons: firstly, they represented a variety of ways that women were a part of the resistance, which helped show the breadth of women’s participation – in the cities and mountains, taking up arms, organizing, publishing clandestine newspapers, etc.; secondly, they also represented the work of different areas of occupied Italy, so I could use their stories to better put the larger history of the resistance into context; thirdly, these women also left behind enough material – including memoirs and detailed testimonies – that would allow me to give a full picture of their lives on the page.

Did you encounter any challenges in your research? Anything surprising?

Researching in Italy, I found, can be very different than in the United States — in ways that are both helpful and more challenging. There are many small archives in Italy, and they are not necessarily connected to a master database or affiliated with a university or municipality, like in the United States. This made it difficult sometimes to find sources I may have read about in a bibliography, and these sources were less likely to be digitized or available in the United States.

But this is also helpful — as there are so many places that may have amazing, unmarked folders hiding artifacts that few living people had actually seen or considered in historical context. The research may be harder to find, but there are a lot of places to look and a great culture among intrepid archivists wanting to preserve these stories.

What are lessons we can still learn today from these brave women?

There are so many lessons! For one, despite the fact that these are stories of individual heroes, I did strive to emphasize the importance of collective action. Nothing can be accomplished in a vacuum — the thousands of members of the resistance, the millions who went on strike, the many who contributed a few lire or knit a pair of socks — were all essential. It wasn’t until all of these people acted together that the Germans and Italian Fascists truly understood how formidable a foe the Italian people were. There is power in numbers, and much can happen through effective community organizing and communal action.