I finished up reading the book Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel
Hmm…I’ve read some of those and loved them so I was hopeful I might love this book too.
I really like that lately I’ve found more WWII books but not all are about the death camps. This one had plenty of struggles and death but the death camp books are harder for me to read. This one is also about a vantage point of Italian citizens. I appreciate seeing the war from all fronts and experiences. This is based on a true story so it makes the book even better.
Here’s what Amazon had to say:“Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.
In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.
Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.”
Amazon readers gave the book 4.8 stars….I think I’ll agree with that. It was a very good book and is a story that definitely needed to be told.
I loved this book although it is not typically something I would read. It really put a human face on the challenges faced by war.