" I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the flimsy sheet of airmail paper. Having grown up as an only child, I was shocked to discover in one day that I might have two brothers in other parts of the world. If this one had survived, I thought. Perhaps he had been hidden with a kind family in the hills, to be reunited with his mother when hostilities ceased. That is what I tried to believe. But now I was dying to know more. My father never spoke of his wartime experiences, but I knew from my mother that he had been a pilot with the RAF and terribly brave, flying missions over occupied Europe until he was shot down and nearly died. I hadn’t even known this happened over Italy. One didn’t tend to think of Italy as a scene of bombing missions. "

― Rhys Bowen , The Tuscan Child