A historically bold and dramatically lively war tale.
In this historical novel, Jewish musicians running from the Nazis are helped by Roman Catholic priests in a Sicilian village during World War II.
In 1942, Pope Pius XII finds himself in a precarious position, torn between a desire to denounce the atrocities committed by the Nazi and Soviet militaries and the importance of maintaining the Vatican’s neutrality, which allows it to become a sanctuary for Jewish refugees. While rhetorically cautious, the pope acts with great boldness, encouraging Catholic priests to help disenfranchised Jews. LoCoco astutely creates a story about a plan devised with the Vatican’s imprimatur, a scheme to hide Jewish musicians in the fictional Bellafortuna, a Sicilian village with a reputation for its “immense passion for music.” But this is a perilous undertaking—the Jews will hide in plain sight, posing as Italians, assuming new identities, and learning rudimentary Italian. The tale focuses on three Jewish musicians—Alfred Keller, Heinrich Bergman, and Kurt Hofmann—who narrowly escaped death at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen. The plot can devolve into an excess of sentimentality—Heinrich, a talented violinist, rediscovers the joy of music in Bellafortuna, a scene wrought with melodrama. He thanks Annika Adler, the wife of a composer, for helping him overcome his sadness about his mother’s death and reigniting his enthusiasm for music: “You have opened my heart to music again and to life, and you have brought to my mind the memory of my dear mother. For all of that, I am forever grateful.” But the book as a whole is impressively nuanced and articulates an account of the Catholic Church’s opposition to Hitler’s despotism not always accurately reflected in the historical literature. Instead of being cowardly or indifferent, the controversial Pope Pius is portrayed in this novel as diplomatically prudent as well as deeply constrained by the Vatican’s tenuous political power. The author’s fictional story about the musicians and his interpretation of the Vatican’s wartime actions are based on his research, including the “historical fact that Italians hid the Jews.” Whether or not this portrait of the pope is ultimately proved to be correct by historians, it is an impressively balanced one. The tale takes admirable pains to furnish readers with what LoCoco considers a fuller picture of the Vatican’s position during the war.
A historically bold and dramatically lively war tale.Pub Date: June 1, 2022
ISBN: 9780972882491
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Cefalutana Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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