Tina triumphs against all odds with an unconditional love for a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fortitude to carve out a successful life on her own terms. It will bring the history of war torn Europe to life, providing us a lens upon our collective past that define our unique lives. The plot and setting are true to life in the period of the past. Despite a raging war, Tina thinks about her family and her friends more than about the horrors of the battle fought across the continents, even when she is a victim of the German soldiers' mockery and the American soldier's unusual ways. Tina respects her parent's decisions and sacrifices herself for the greater good-even when it is not apparent to her.

Despite circumstances that could be categorized as abusive and undeniably negligent. At times, her nonjudgmental stance is disquieting. Tina has earned the right to complain, yet at no point does she play the victim. Tina must live under her roof and her rules until her citizenship is secure. A tyrannical, overbearing, bootlegging aunt in America arranges the match.

To gain passage to America she must accept the role as a war bride. By the age of 15, her fate is sealed, again, without her permission. As she grows older, she struggles to keep the harsh realities of World War II and abandonment at a distance through her sense of humor, imagination and determination. Her spirit trumps over adversity during the war times within and around her. She is able to forgive those who took so much away from her. The child witnesses and experiences many disturbing things from her uncouth, unsanitary living conditions to the failed paratroopers dangling from trees during the allied invasion. In wartime Europe, childhood does not exist. This time sickness, warfare and destruction are her enemies. After eight years, she returns home to find her childhood interrupted again. Less than 25 kilometers away her family leads a very different life. Her school is taken over by German soldiers and the things like bread and eggs that were once plentiful, no longer exist. The child grows up while WW II ravages the town. She shares her breakfast with goats and chickens while living in the shadow of fascism. She sleeps between a loving aunt and a deranged uncle. Tina lives in a one-room house in one of the poorest regions of Sicily. It was not an abduction nor was it an adoption. She spends the next eight years of her life absent from their lives. In Sicily, 1935 a four-year child walks away from her loving family, her mother, her sister and an infant brother, with a great-aunt for a vacation.

Given Away by Marianna Biazzo Randazzo