Last Updated on September 16, 2022
Resident Ed Appel will review Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel [Seattle: Lake Union Publishing, 2017] by Mark Sullivan on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 7 PM in the Auditorium.
Everyone, fan or not of World War II “biographical and historical fiction,” can enjoy the 2017 best-seller Beneath A Scarlet Sky, soon a new movie. Mark Sullivan has authored 18 books, mostly mysteries, five with James Patterson.
Sullivan discovered forgotten hero Giuseppe “Pino” Lella’s story. From 1943 to 1945, Pino rescued Jewish refugees, and spied for the Allies while a driver for Hitler’s Reich Minister for Armaments and War Production in Italy, Major General Hans Leyers.
Pino, 17, from a wealthy Milan family, quickly matures while in refuge at Casa Alpina, leading Jews fleeing the Nazis over the Alps to Switzerland. Enlisting as a German army engineer, to avoid battle, by chance, Pino becomes Gen. Leyers’ driver. His exploits include encounters with Benito Mussolini, Nazi SS General Karl Wolff, and Cardinal Alfredo Schuster of Milan.
Sullivan recounts Pino’s spellbinding perils in climbs and avalanches, confrontations with robbers, skiing with a pregnant Jewish violinist on his back and near loss of two fingers in a bombing. As Gen. Leyers’ chauffeur through Italy, Pino translates using nanny-taught French and English. He reports significant intelligence through his uncle via shortwave radio to the Allies. Pino falls in love with Anna, Leyers’ lover Dolly’s maid, and they struggle to survive the war. Pino performs a suicide mission for OSS. Partisans execute collaborators, filling Milan’s streets with bodies, as Nazis retreat.
This tale is a good summer beach read, though historians may question details, and literary critics will recognize the hyperbole and coincidences in its plot and flowing prose.
Resident Ed Appel, retired from the FBI, is an author and teacher. He has presented courses for ELLIC and a previous book review.