Description
Book SynopsisAt his beloved Nonno Paolo''s deathbed, fifteen-year-old Nico receives a gift that will change his life forever: a yellowing manuscript which tells the haunting, twisty tale of what really happened to his grandfather in Nazi-occupied Venice in 1943.
ATimesBest Thriller Book of 2022
The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men, trapped together in the dusty palace on Venice?s Grand Canal. Awkward fifteen-year-old Nico. His distant, business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather, Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes, he has secrets he?s waited his whole life to share.
When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies, Nico just watches ? earning him a week?s suspension and a typed, yellowing manuscript from his frail Nonno Paolo. A history lesson, his grandfather says. A secret he must keep from his father. A tale of blood and madness . . .
Nico is transported back to the Venice of 1943, an occupied city seething under its Nazi overlords, and to the defining moment of his grandfather?s life: when Paolo?s support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the city?s underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled, Nico can?t stop reading ? but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.
