Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Beneath a Scarlet Sky – by Mark Sullivan

“But the world’s focused on France, and forgotten Italy.”

It sounds like a crass thing to say, but wars do bring out some great stories. There’s something about a combination of tragedy, espionage, romance, late-night bombing raids, and the overwhelming fear of death that has given many a writer great ideas for tales. This book is actually based on a true story. What makes it somewhat more appealing is that the story takes place in Italy. What other World War II  stories do you know that have taken place in Italy?  Not many. What exactly was Italy’s role in World War II anyway?  Weren’t they one of the three ‘bad guys’ headed by the unstable fascist Il Duce (Benito Mussolini)? 

True, but by 1942, Italy was already ‘conquered’ and the majority fled their lukewarm allegiance towards Hitler and the axis and then turned towards the allies.  By 1944, when this story starts, the country, however, was filled with black-shirt fascists who never turned, as well as German Gestapo agents everywhere.  It’s in this environment that we meet our protagonist, 17-year-old Pino Lela. Like most boys 17 thrown in a middle of war, he’s obviously having to grow up quite fast. All he wants to really do is find a girl and fall in love. He makes an attempt to woo a stranger on a street – beautiful 23-year-old Anna – who halfheartedly agrees to meet him at the cinema later in the evening. It’s quite obvious she’s just trying to get rid of this testosterone filled adolescent and move on with whatever she’s doing.

It’s a good thing she stands him up, as the theater is bombed during a night raid. Pino finds himself thrust into the war at this point. It’s high time for him to do something to help the cause. We then see Pino recruited for a couple of dangerous missions that basically take up the bulk of the book. His adventures aren’t really connected, but it’s still quite the adventure.  Of course, every few pages, we read about his fascination with Anna – the girl he met for a total of about two minutes. He can’t stop thinking about her. Well, this IS a somewhat true story, but when we read about Anna so often, it’s obvious that she’s bound to show up again in our story.

So, yes, our war tale contains a fair bit of romance along with tragedy. To be frank, the tragedy and travails of a world war seem a bit toned down in this book. My guess is the author didn’t want to gross out any of his readers. So even though we read about citizens being murdered by firing squads, forced slavery, and trains filled with Jews heading to Auschwitz, I never really felt the pain and remorse that I think I should have felt. Pino seemed a tad too lovestruck throughout the pages for his surroundings to ever appear too grim.  The book seemed ‘PG’ rated when I felt it should have been a hard ‘R’ for the emotions to really sink in as they should.

I also felt that had this NOT been a true story, I would have enjoyed the last quarter of the book better. We must remember that real life doesn’t always give us stories the way we wish they would be told, so I need to give the author a ‘pass’ when certain events didn’t happen the way that I was hoping they would.

Truth be told, the story is told very well, so one can easily forget that we’re reading about a true account. The very end of the book does a good job summing up the ‘Where are they now?” portion of the main figures that survived the tragedy.  Again – some unanswered questions and some events unfolding a bit differently than one would want. As I write this review, the book is supposedly being made into a mini-series.  I’m thinking it will be a good one. It’s definitely a bit too varied to be summed up into one nice, neat movie.  Somehow, I’m guessing the nastier elements of the war will be toned down as well. I guess that’s probably a good thing – if that’s what most people want.