Review
Author: Mark Sullivan
Reviewed by: SHA
Issue: June 2017
Beneath A Scarlet Sky is billed correctly as a novel but, as noted in the author's Preface it is "a novel of biographical and historical fiction that hews closely to what happened to Pino Lella between June 1943 and May 1945." He explains that when he first learned of an extraordinary, untold story of World War II with a 17-year-old Italian boy at its center, he could not believe it was true. Upon learning that Pino Lella was still alive living in Northern Italy, at that time Pino was 79 (he's now 90) and was reluctant to open up, but Sullivan went to Italy and spent three weeks with him, beginning a ten year research/writing project culminating in the publication of this book. He was hampered by the "collective amnesia" concerning Italy and Italians after the war, the burning of documents by the Nazis and an irregular paper trail, but managed to ferret out the story, noting in the process that there are countless books about D-Day and the war in Western Europe but little about the pitched battle for Italy, often called the "Forgotten Front." Set in Milan (and surroundings) where his family lived, Pino and his younger brother, Mino, are sent out of the city to a Catholic boys camp in the Alps for their safety after Milan is bombed. While there, under the guidance of an irrepressible priest, Pino becomes a skilled and important guide in an underground railroad for Jews escaping Italy over the Alps to Switzerland. Upon returning to Milan, his family forces him to enlist in the German army to avoid being sent to the Eastern Front and is ultimately assigned as the driver for German General Hans Leyer, using this position to feed crucial information to the Resistance. Beneath A Scarlet Sky is a wartime epic, a taut thriller as Pino operates under a huge risk of exposure, witnesses the Jews being herded to railroad cars headed for Auschwitz, sees the savagery of the Nazis, and the cruel enslavement of prisoners to work for the Third Reich. He is chastised by his own brother and others for his "treason," and manages to escape numerous tense situations, all while falling in love with Anna, six years his senior (who has her own story), now working as a maid for the mistress of General Leyer. Once into the story, readers will be riveted to the extraordinary courage and compassion of Pino Lella.