One More Moon: Goodbye Mussolini!
One Woman’s Story of Fate and Survival
By: Ralph Webster / Narrated By: Nina Price
Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
Fate has a way of connecting the dots
As a child, Elsa looked in the mirror and wondered what fate had in store for her. Looking back now, she thinks she'd never have believed all she went through. Even so, with hindsight, she can see the many, many dots/experiences in her life linking to others; all to make a single glorious picture of her life.
One More Moon: Goodbye Mussolini is told through her eyes as a 98-year old woman living in an assisted living facility--she's passing the story, even the secrets on, and eventually her grandson, Ralph Webster, will put it all together in this fascinating work.
It all begins in the 1930's as Elsa and her husband Paul and their children live in Fascist Italy under Mussolini. Life is not terrible even with personal freedoms taken away. They are able to live and work, and to buy and run the Pensione Alexandra in Naples. As innkeepers, they take in every type of person, every lifestyle imaginable; from RAF servicemen to American journalists, from simple tourists to those fleeing persecution in others countries as Hitler's power grows and spreads. They experience joy and confusion as they begin hearing of atrocities being committed elsewhere. Many, many months/years after their children have fled to America, Elsa and Paul must make the difficult decision to leave also, becoming refugees and trying to find any country that will accept them.
There's not a whole lot of action in the book. Rather, it's mostly a chronicle of a very, very interesting time in global history. It's frightening how the uncomfortable can become the intolerable--nobody believes what is happening will last, nobody believes the worst will come. Elsa is a fantastic woman, and she tells her story with warmth and humor, especially as she breaks the narrative to speak of what a rascal she's become in her old age. What a delight!
There are a couple of production glitches in the audio production that should be mentioned: The volume is bright and clear at the beginning of each chapter but slowly becomes a tad muted and quieter by the end. But Nina Price's narration is nothing short of stunning. An American, she somehow carries the accent of an older German woman throughout the entire audiobook, even changing voices for other characters at the end of the book. I kept checking back to see if there was a co-narrator, but there wasn't. Simply astounding.
At the end, when the story finishes, stay tuned for the interview by Nina Price of Ralph Webster as it's quite enlightening, and it connects a few dots about what's happening today. Plus, I loved the way he speaks of the title. I understood it from the text but to hear it from Webster was almost heartbreaking. During the book, Elsa simply adores watching the moon rise over Naples. But by the end of her life, when lights are turned out and she and the others of the facility are forced to go to bed, all she wants is to stay up, to go outside, to see one more moon. Before she dies.
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