Available at Barnes&Noble, Amazon, and independent bookshops like The Last Bookstore (LA), Books Are Magic (NYC), Harriet’s Bookshop (Philly), East City Bookshop (DC), or direct at Univ. of Nebraska Press.

Order in the UK at Blackwell’s and throughout the EU and Australia.

Release date: September 2022

“The author’s skillful prose vividly captures the daily triumphs and tragedies of the hero foot soldier, and the crucible of South Philadelphia that produced so many.” — Executive Producer of GI Jane and The Sandlot

“VERDICT: Hers is a deeply personal venture but also one of significant importance now and for all future generations to learn from.” — Library Journal

“A compelling World War II read—a first-rate page-turner... There is more than one hero in these pages.” — former VA Congressman Bill Whitehurst (1969–87), Navy aviator in the Pacific Theater (1943–46)

“The author has the skill to make her intimate family portraits as precise as a song by Frank Sinatra.” — Lincoln Star Journal

“Well crafted and courageous, this book should take its rightful place as the next one you read.” — Italian America Magazine

DeFonzo “combines memoir, history, travel, and adventure in a groundbreaking hybrid work” — Washington Independent Review of Books

“A beautiful family history is preserved, all while transporting readers across time dimensions and continents…The book’s greatest strengths lie in its relatability.” — Broad Street Review, Philadelphia

A blend of memoir, history, travel, adventure, and oral storytelling, The Time Left between Us bridges the gap between the generation who fought and the generation who has forgotten. Alicia takes an unplanned visit to the Normandy beaches while staying in Paris. She becomes distraught after realizing how little she knows about the war and her grandfather experiences, which until then had remained largely unspoken. Across landscapes and lifetimes, she retraces her beloved grandfather’s tour through World War II Europe. The eighty-four-year-old Del recounts stories as an Army combat engineer surviving major campaigns, including Normandy, St. Lo, the Bulge, Hürtgenwald, Remagen, then liberating concentration camps. In this braided narrative nonfiction, Alicia’s and Del’s childhood parallel in a traditional Italian American family in Philadelphia. Spanning ten years, Alicia’s travels and research take an unexpected detour after she inherits a Nazi Waffen-SS diary from her grandfather, and in her final trip, returns to Germany to confront the diary owner’s family. Their storylines merge when Del undergoes open-heart surgery and Alicia must be the one to safeguard the past.