Love and war....
In the summer of 1944, Italian partisans engaged in brutal battles with the Germans in the beautiful hills of Tuscany. As the SS began committing ghastly atrocities, terrified villagers fled to farmhouses in the hills for safety.
The Cielo: A Novel of Wartime Tuscany, is the story of some of those villagers. It is, in fact, inspired by the experiences of the author's relatives, and the actual "Cielo" (literally "heaven") is now a farmhouse available for rent in Tuscany.
...under the Tuscan sun
As the war rages all around them, the villagers at the farmhouse overcome petty differences, face betrayal by one of them, fearlessly take in an escaped POW, and survive a raid by the SS. In the course of this, a girl finds love, two boys become heroes, and secrets are revealed. Then an unthinkable, horrific event changes all of the villagers forever. Not all of them will return to their devastated homes.
The Cielo is a gripping story of courage, endurance and the power of the human spirit in the cruelest of times.