In a Flash

In 1940, eight-year-old Simona and her five-year-old sister Carolina leave Italy with their family when their father becomes cook to the Italian ambassador in Japan. The sisters and their father are later caught in Tokyo as World War II spreads across Europe and Asia. Motherless and far from Italy, they struggle to survive amid war, internment, and danger. The novel centers the sisters’ devotion to one another as their family confronts the circumstances of wartime Japan.