When Rome Falls: A Novel of World War II

ROME UNDER THE NAZI HEEL: Italy has surrendered, Hitler's forces have moved in - and so has a vast hidden network of escaped Allied prisoners of war. And somewhere in the city is a spy...out to wreak havoc when Rome is liberated.

John "Jay Mack" MacPherson, an American major, leads the hidden POW organization with his contact, the gentle Father Francesco, a priest in a church on Vatican soil. Jay shares a billet with former POWs Buck Nolan, a plain-spoken GI, and David Lawrence, a British RAF Flight Lieutenant, in the home of Maria, a lovely Roman with whom Jay falls in love. When Maria is arrested for harboring POWs, an offense punishable by death, Jay's grief knows no bounds.

The three move their billet to the art-filled villa of Adriana, a rich socialite with a lover in the German officer corps and a son and daughter in the Resistance. Vittoria, her daughter, is an expert bomb-maker who inadvertently dooms a fellow partisan, Renzo, a survivor of the roundup of the Roman Jews, to a fateful mistake the night before a bold attack on an SS police column. The raid goes awry and Rome's Gestapo chief, Herbert Kappler, is called upon to carry out a gruesome reprisal on hundreds of innocent Romans.

Nazis and fascists, partisans and POWs in hiding - all await the liberation of the city, some with fear, others with hope. And among them lurks a spy, poised to betray the entire POW network when the American army enters Rome. When Rome Falls blends historical facts with fictional characters to deliver a fast-paced tale of breathtaking intrigue and razor-sharp plot twists.