THE LINES WE CROSSED is a historical novel set in Umbria, Italy from 1943-1944. One October morning, Emilia Testadura awakes to find the Nazis have arrived in her village. Major Christoph Strauss presses Emilia into service as housekeeper for the soldiers who now occupy an abandoned palazzo in the village. As the stakes and complications rise in the war throughout winter and spring, so they do for Emilia. Brutal reinforcements arrive and conditions become very dangerous. Emilia realizes she is falling in love with Major Strauss. She learns secrets that change her view of her deceased father and herself. That knowledge leads her to take action which reveals Major Strauss’s true colors before he is sent south to engage the Allies. Once the Allies take Emilia’s village from the Nazis, Emilia makes a final discovery and a decision that leads her south, too, towards a future she had never imagined.
