Genre: Book
Grade: A
Notable People: Mark Sullivan
Title: “Beneath a Scarlet Sky”
Review: Standalone novel from prolific author who often collaborates with James Patterson. This one took me by surprise and knocked me off my feet. Seventeen-year-old Pino Lella is living the life in Milan in 1943, when the Nazis invade and change everything. He becomes a smuggler of Jews across the border to neutral Switzerland, by mountain climbing and skiing in impossible conditions, and then becomes a driver for the Nazi General who is the architect of Italy’s occupation and devastation…. from which he becomes a valuable spy for the Italian resistance and the Allies. The book follows the trajectory of the war in Italy for its last two years until the Nazi surrender. Filled with rich and real historical characters, death-defying treks over the Alps and a moving love story. This is one you will not want to end.