The Last Green Valley - Mark Sullivan (black female authors .txt) 📗

PRAISE FOR The Last Green Valley

“Mark Sullivan has done it again! The Last Green Valley is a compelling and inspiring story of heroism and courage in the dark days at the end of World War II. Fans of Beneath a Scarlet Sky will savor this novel based on an extraordinary and little-known tale of the war and its aftermath.”

—Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone

“Mark Sullivan weaves together history and memory in an epic journey of love and resilience. One of the most riveting, page-turning books I’ve read in a long time.”

—Heather Morris, author of the #1 international and New York Times bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“Sullivan again demonstrates his gift for finding little-known embers of history and breathing life into them until they glow and shine in ways that are both moving and memorable.”

—Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris

ALSO BY MARK SULLIVAN

Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Thief

Outlaw

Rogue

The Rogue Genesis Trilogy

Triple Cross

The Serpent’s Kiss/The Second Woman

Labyrinth

Ghost Dance

The Purification Ceremony

Hard News

The Fall Line

With James Patterson

Private Games

Private Berlin

Private L.A.

Private Paris

The Games

Though based on a true story and real characters, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2021 by Suspense Inc

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781503958760 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1503958760 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781503958746 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1503958744 (paperback)

Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

Interior images courtesy of the Martel family.

First edition

For all the grateful refugees who renew this nation every day.

CONTENTS

START READING

PREFACE

PART ONE: THE LONG TREK

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

PART TWO: THE PURE BLOODS

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

PART THREE: THROWN TO THE WIND AND THE WOLVES

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

PART FOUR: A TALE OF TWO PRISONERS

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

PART FIVE: THE LAST GREEN VALLEY

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

AFTERWORD

DISCUSSION GUIDE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

With love in our hearts, there is nothing we cannot overcome.

—Chen Yeng

PREFACE

People told me I would never find another untold World War II story like that of Pino Lella, the hero and basis of my historical novel Beneath a Scarlet Sky. I honestly believed I would, however, and paid close attention to the dozens of letters and pitches I received from people telling me other stories from that time period.

They were all wonderfully interesting in their way. But none of them matched my criteria, which were that the underlying tale had to be inherently moving, inspiring, and potentially transformative to me and so to readers.

Then, in November 2017, I was asked to speak about Pino to the noontime Rotary Club in my hometown of Bozeman, Montana. A retired dentist came up to me afterward to outline a story a local man had told him. It caught my attention immediately.

Two days later, I put the man’s address in my GPS and saw it was less than two miles from my own. The closer I got, I felt odd, and I had no idea why. It wasn’t until I pulled into his driveway and got out of my car that I realized I was no more than two hundred yards away from the home where I’d first heard Pino Lella’s story nearly eleven years before. That story changed my life.

I went to the door, knocked, and my life changed again.

Within fifteen minutes of listening to the particulars of the story of the Martel family, I was more than interested. By the end of two hours, I believed I had a tale to tell that would be a worthy successor to the tale that inspired Beneath. And I’d heard it in the same little neighborhood where I’d first heard Pino’s story. What were the odds of that?

For the next fifteen months after that first meeting, I interviewed survivors and researched and traveled to critical locations in the story, including the ruins of an abandoned farmhouse in deeply rural, far-western Ukraine. From there, I retraced the dangerous and remarkable journey of a young family of refugees on the run westward in a wagon with two horses, often caught between the retreating German armies and the advancing Soviets in the final chaotic year of World War II.

I trailed the Martels’ route through present-day Moldova, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, where the way split: one continuing west and another doubling back east more than eleven hundred miles to the former site of a deadly Soviet POW camp set in the bleak postwar rubble near the Ukrainian border with Belarus.

Along the way, I interviewed participants and eyewitnesses to the “Long Trek,” as well as Holocaust, military, and refugee historians, who helped me to understand the context in which the Martels’ story unfolded and why. I also listened to the recordings of people, long dead, describing the ordeal and felt in awe of the grit, humanity, and spirit they showed in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges and odds.

Even though I had all that information and understanding when I sat down to write this book, there were holes in the tale not completely explained by the limited material I had to rely on.

To bridge those gaps, I have been forced to draw on