Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan

I picked up my book to read a couple of pages before I set off, then spent the next two hours reading. On two occasions, I rose early from my bed and donned my running kit, with good intentions. I shan’t say any more about the story except that it is gripping to the point of distraction. Despite an age difference, they fall in love and Anna is complicit in Pino’s espionage activities. She’d stood him up on a cinema date on that evening and had been on Pino’s mind ever since. He also meets Anna, a young lady whom he’d last seen on the day of the first bombardment of Milan by the Allied bombers. By now, he fully understands the dangers and is a true, if somewhat reluctant, hero. This gives him the opportunity to enter a very dangerous career as a spy for the Allies. Despite the threat of the Alpine climate, challenging terrain and some people with very evil intentions, he delivers many Jews from Father Re’s school into the safe hands of Mr Bergstrom in a forest that straddles the Italian-Swiss border.Įventually, he returns to his home city of Milan and fortuitously, almost by accident, becomes the driver of General Hans Leyers, Hitler’s second-in-command in Italy.

He learns to be a guide in the Italian Alps and builds his strength. Initially, Pino is just doing as his father and the priest, Father Re, tell him to do. If I could award six, or even ten stars to this book, I would.

In his telling of Pino’s story, Mark Sullivan has achieved the pinnacle of his craft. SullivanĮven with exclusive interviews with the hero himself, it takes a tremendous amount of additional research and some wonderful writing to produce such a compelling account of the wartime years of Giuseppe (Pino) Lella.

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan