Excerpt from Women of War by Suzanne Cope, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Teresa was only fourteen when she and her father and elder brothers snuck into the city from their home just beyond. They moved in the shadows of the cathedrals and palazzos of the dense city center to the plaque that instigated violence. Together, the family smeared it with ink.

The next day the parade was delayed and there was a furious search for the culprits.


At the age of sixteen Teresa took her first solo trip in service of the resistance. Her father sent her to France to deliver a four-hundred-thousand-lire donation to the anti-Fascists fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War. This money-and the involvement of anti-Fascist foreigners-was essential to support the democratically elected Republicans since Mussolini and Hitler provided General Franco with extensive financial support and resources. Democracies like England, France, and the United States made a decision to stay out of the conflict, gun-shy after the death and destruction of the Great War. And yet supporters from Italy and around the world would head to Spain to fight on the side of anti-Fascism, with many others raising money and sending supplies.

Teresa had handed off the money and was on her way home when she was stopped at the Italian border, the reason for her trip under suspicion. She was thrown into jail with women arrested for sex work or petty theft, her first time meeting people whose experiences and upbringing were so vastly different from those of the middle-class intellectuals her family knew. Teresa only shared a few words with them, not wanting to compromise her cover story. But they were kind to her as she sat on the cell bench, fearful but exuding an innate stoicism that would come to serve her well.

In the interrogation room, the Fascist officer barked at her, Why were you in France? Who were you meeting? The daughter of a known agitator traveling alone was suspect. What did your father send you to do?

"I was just traveling to practice my French," she insisted.

Teresa kept her composure as she was questioned-and her father was able to convince the officers that what she said was true, that he would never send his young daughter to do anything dangerous or illegal. Teresa returned home undaunted. But the women from the jail cell stayed with her as she began to consider her own reasons-and not just her father's-for taking part in these subversive actions.

Excerpted from Women of War by Suzanne Cope. Copyright © 2025 by Suzanne Cope. Excerpted by permission of Dutton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.