"In 1938 my middle-class parents decided to send me and my sister Blossom to Italy to spend a year with our eldest sister Harriet. It was the most thrilling year of my young life. We girls from Joplin, Missouri found ourselves suddenly among the wealthy and sophisticated. We cruised the Mediterranean on an ocean liner, toured fascist Italy and saw Mussolini. We met people of many nationalities as they fled or braced themselves for the approaching...