Afterword
War Serenade truly began as a fairy tale for me. It was my favorite story, and the fact that I knew the characters, who were dear friends of my parents, made it even more delicious. The love story of a handsome Italian opera singer who became a POW in a South African camp was in itself fairly exotic. But that he fell in love with a local beauty, who was literally sitting in the third row of the audience during his performance outside the prison walls, became delectable fodder for my young imagination.
I remember visiting these friends of my parents and gazing at them with true reverence. They were everything and more than my mother’s fairy tale promised. He was handsome, charming, heavily accented, and she was a delicate beauty with spice and spunk that shone through her very p
