MARINA'S MISSION

In a gripping new novel, the fearless daughter of an art gallery owner risks everything to save precious paintings from the Nazis who murdered her beloved Papa.

- ANITA ABRIEL

Rome, November 1943 Marina Tozzi crossed Piazza di Santa Maria, hugging her parcel to her chest. The late afternoon sun reflected off the gold-flecked tower of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, giving Marina a glimmer of hope.

The Nazis may have made it impossible to get food, turning even the most honest Roman citizens into experts on the black market. They may have prompted all the young men to join the Italian army, leaving the streets filled with mothers missing their sons, young women longing for their husbands. But they couldn’t dim the famous Roman light, the light that had drawn artists to the city for centuries.

Marina would know. Her father, Vittorio, was an art dealer who often spoke of the great artists who once resided in the city: Caravaggio, Bernini, Michelangelo. Some historians claimed they had come because they had been sponsored by wealthy Romans or had sought camaraderie with other artists at the workshops. But her father insisted it was for the light. Nowhere in Italy, not in Venice, Florence or Naples, was the light as spectacular as in Rome, strands of gold caressing the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, as if the whole city had been touched by God.

As she turned onto her street, there was a popping sound. The door to their house was flung open. Marina was about to run up the steps when she heard voices shouting in German. She quickly hid behind a bush, her fingers gripping the precious anchovies she’d traded her silk purse for to make her father’s favourite pasta sauce.