Plunge

A P-47 American pilot shot down in northern Italy parachutes into a mountainside. Daring partisans hide him from the Nazis for tedeschi are everywhere. A generation later, the airman’s grown daughter journeys to meet his saviors and her namesakes, gradually becoming a member of village life.
In her second collection, Plunge, Johnson gracefully weaves memory, research and first-hand experience into a poignant portrayal of her father, as well as his rescuers and her deepening ties to their descendants.
Honoring the music and mysteries of language—a letter home in soldier-slang harmonizes with Latin prayer, local Italian dialect clashes with formal German, lovers falter in their common high school French—Plunge portrays wartime horror and hard-earned prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.