The Light In The Ruins by Chris Bohjalian

The Light in the Ruins is a historical mystery murder set in postwar Italy. The novel opens with the brutal and gruesome murder of Francesca Rosati in her apartment house in Florence. The novel contains three narratives, the first in italics is that of the killer, the second set in the past in 1943 during World War II, and the third in the present year of 1955 in postwar Italy.

The Murderer

The first narrative, set in italics is that of the murderer who describes in graphic detail how he murdered and dismembered Francesca Rosati. Thirty-nine-year-old Francesca's murder is committed during the early morning hours of the first Tuesday of June, 1955. The killer is able to easily break into her apartment building in a working class neighborhood in Florence on the Via Zara - a place he notes she would not have known existed, ten years ago. He then lies to get into her third floor apartment and kills her quickly but also removes her heart and places it on her vanity. His next victim will be the marchesa,  Francesca's mother, Beatrice Rosati.

As the details about Francesca's past come to light in the newspapers, the killer indicates that he plans to kill every surviving member of the Rosati family. Since Francesca's husband, Marco and their children Massimo and Alessia are dead as well as Antonio, this leaves Beatrice, Cristina, Vittore, his wife Guila and their two children Tatiana and Elisabetta. Cristina will be murdered last.

Shortly after the murder of Francesca, the killer murders the sixty-four-year=old marchesa, Beatrice Rosati in the hallway of the hotel she's staying at , slitting her throat and dragging her back to her hotel room. After Beatrice is murdered, he eviscerates her as he did with Francesca, removing her heart and placing it in a box atop a corner of the Florentine bridge that is in a painting. The killer then lays out how he now plans to kill the remaining Rosatis. Vittore's wife Giulia and their two girls, will be killed first, then he will kill Vittore and finally Cristina. The killer reveals that he plans to murder every surviving member of the Rosati family and that he has waited years to accomplish this.  He is patient, waiting for the right time just as he had to for Beatrice's murder. With each murder, he plans to cut out the heart of his victim and do something significant with it, as a sort of hint to the motive. 

1943-1944

At the beginning of the 1943 narrative, eighteen-year-old Cristina Rosati is watching planes as they fly over the Tuscan countryside. Cristina's brother Marco who is an engineer, is in Sicily making preparations for the expected Allied invasion, while her other brother twenty-six-year-old Vittore who is an archeologist, is safe in Florence. Cristina lives with her mother and father, Beatrice and Antonio, the marchesa and marchese of the Villa Chimera which is set in the Tuscan countryside, southeast of Siena. The family estate, Villa Chimera, overlooks Monte Volta and the vineyards and olive gardens. Also living in the villa is Cristina's sister-in-law, Francesca who is married to thirty-year-old Marco, as well as Francesca's two children, seven-year-old Massimo and five year-old Alessia. It is an afternoon in May and Francesca has just put the two children down for a nap. The planes are scaring Massimo who has overhead conversations about the war.

Cristina and her family are visited by an Italian, Major Giancarlo Lorenzetti and a German, Colonel Erhard Decher. Their appearance makes Cristina anxious but it turns out that they want to see the Etruscan tombs on the property. The ruins were discovered in 1937 and after an archeological dig, the artifacts of value including urns and sarcophogi were sent to the museum in Arezzo. Lorenzetti is an art historian who is hosting Colonel Decher. He tells Cristina that Decher has come to the Uffizi and has stated that "select artistic treasures may have to be moved to Germany for safeguarding until the end of the war." The Germans seem interested in Eruscan artifacts. Cristina realizes that since the war is going badly with the likelihood that Italy will be invaded by the Allies, the Germans are now interested in the theft of Italian artifacts. Decher was an architect before the war but he knows little about Etruscan history.

Vittore meets twenty-three-year-old Frederich Strekker, Decher's adjutant. Strekker is from Kesselsdorf, located outside of Dresden and his father is the curator of the musem there. Strekker tells Vittore that he loves Italy and that he served in Russia where he lost the lower part of his right leg. He is a well decorated soldier who has served in Greece, France and Ukraine. During a meeting one evening, Vittore tells Lorenzetti and Decher that all the artifacts from the Etruscan tombs are now in the museum in Arezzo. Decher informs Vittore that Herbert Kappler who is the SS liason to Mussolini is interested in the Etruscan artifacts. Vittore knows that a certain faction of the SS, the Ahnenerbe "is obsessed about ancestral German heritage." This is confirmed by Decher who tells him that the Reichsfuhrer, Himmler, is interested in the origins of race and believes there were Germanic tribes in this area of Italy long ago.

Meanwhile in Sicily, Captain Marco Rosati learns that the entire Italian First Army has surrendered and the battle at Tunis has been lost. His engineer, Moretti tells him that they will be next. Marco knows that laying mines on the beach will only delay the inevitable. The Allies will take Sicily and then move on to Italy.

Vittore, Lorenzetti and Decher along with Decher's adjutant, twenty-three-year-old Frederich Strekker leave Uffizi, the museum in Florence to travel to Arezzo. There they will be meeting up with the Rosati family  On the drive through Arezzo to the museum there, Cristina is shocked at the random destruction of parts of the city and the large number of corpses out in the open.  At the meeting with the Nazis, Cristina is captivated by Frederich Strekker and invites him to join her family at a restaurant while Vittore, Lorenzetti and Decher investigate the artifacts.

Frederich arranges to visit Villa Chimera after visiting Siena to poach a Simone Martini painting, on the pretext of viewing the Etruscan tombs. Frederich tells Cristina that he hopes the war will not come to Italy and that it will not be destroyed in the same way Russia was. Meanwhile the Ertuscan tombs become of great interest to the Germans, who want some of the relics to go to Rome and some to Germany while the Italians want them to stay in Tuscany. Cristina and Frederich share a mutual attraction and become romantically involved. Cristina's mother tells her that Frederich is a German and a Nazi who likely hates Jews and Russians.  

As Allies capture Sicily and begin invading Italy, life for the Rosati family becomes more challenging as their villa is commandeered by the Germans. Marco is now used as slave labour, repairing roads and railway tracks bombed by the Allies. But after five months, the German guards were lax and it was easy for him to slip away when he was southwest of Mount Amiata and walk to the Villa Chimera. There he was certain to find his wife and his beloved children. And he does but it isn't long before a group of partisans show up. They had been fighting in Trequanda and now have a badly injured teen girl who has been burned. It is the appearance of the partisans that will change life forever for the Rosati family.

1955

In the present, 1955, Serafina Bettini is the only woman investigator in the homicide unit in Florence. forty-eight-year-old Chief Inspector Paolo Ficino doesn't want to take Serafina to the Rosati crime scene because it is so grisly. However given her past he decides she can probably handle it. Serafina was a member of the partisans fighting against both the Nazis and the fascists in Italy. Her two brothers were murdered and with their deaths, having no other family, Serafina joined. 

In a battle between the retreating Nazi's and the partisans in Monte Volta, Serafina was badly injured by an incendiary grenade, her back, neck and arm burned. She remembers nothing of the time immediately afterwards, except that she was cared for a  nearby villa, but she's certain that is was not the Villa Chimera. 

Cristina tells Serafina that although she now lives in Rome with her mother, they have a villa in Monte Volta but no one lives there. She tells the police detective that the villa, which they called Villa Chimera had an olive grove, a small vineyard, cattle and a few horses. Serafina can't quite remember but she recalls that her partisan band had hidden from the Nazis in 1944. She remebers being wounded in "a brutal firefight at that beautiful villa near Monte Volta" as they tried to hold up the Germans so the British or the Americans could catch up and engage them. However, the Germans put up more fight than expected and her band had to fall back to villa. Now Serafina wonders if maybe "this woman's family had in fact been German sympathizers-- supporters of Mussolini--even as late as 1944..." Serafina remembers that there were many partisan groups in Tuscany as they all fought to defeat the hated Nazis and those who supported them. She learns from Cristina that Francesca's husband Marco is deceased as are their two children. Cristina tells her that they did not know the Germans had mined the estate and that is how Francesca's children died.

Serafina lives in a two-bedroom apartment on the south side of the Arno River with her roommate, an American banker named Milton and his gay lover who is a purser on the SS Cristoforo Columbo. Milton is her best friend but people believe he is her lover. Serafina doesn't know how her family would feel about her unusual living arrangements as she has no living family. They were all murdered when she was much younger.

After interviewing the tenants in Francesca's building Serafina is told by a widow that Francesca had seen someone she recognized and who frightened her and she asked the widow for the name of a locksmith. Interviewing Isabella, Francesca's boss at the dress shop, The Sunflower, Serafina learns that Francesca saw many men and that she was going to dinner with a lawyer from Bologna at the very elegant Il Latini. That man, Mario Spagnoli returns to Florence to tell the police what he knows about Francesca's last night. The coroner, Alberto Carli explains how Francesca's heart was removed from her chest - by someone using the tools of a surgeon.

Paolo interviews Beatrice who is also with her daughter, Cristina. They tell Paolo that Francesco was not well liked as she was opinionated and direct, that she was angry and judgemental after the deaths of Marco and her children. Beatrice had not seen her since Christmas of  1950. Cristina is not so convinced that Mario Spagnoli is innocent since his alibi is not convincing. That night at dinner with Milton, Serafina wonders if Francesca's murder is somehow connected to the war. Her own memories of what happened near Monte Volta are vague: she only remembers being treated for the horrific burns on her scalp and down the right side of her back. In questioning Cristina, Serafina learns that there were three men who worked with Vittore at the museum; an Italian, Major Giancarlo Lorenzetti and a German, Colonel Erhard Decher. Cristina omits the name of Frederich Strekker but states that they had been coming to the villa for a year - since 1943. Paolo is puzzled as to why someone would wait eleven years to kill Francesca, unless perhaps they were in jail. After visiting Monte Volta and talking to people who knew the Rosatis including a young man who worked on the estate, Serafina learns that Cristina was involved with a German soldier, Frederich Strekker. It also appeared to the people in the village that the Rosati's were collaborators with the Nazis. This leads Serafina to suspect that Cristina may now be in danger.

However, as she's leaving Monte Volta, the smell of mushrooms at a restaurant makes Serafina remember that this smell was what she encountered earlier in the day at the Etruscan tomb on the Rosati's villa. She returns to the tombs but it is not the mushroom smell but the images on the walls of the tombs that bring back her memory: it was in the tombs, after the British had taken Monte Volta that she was hidden and treated for her terrible burns.

As Serafina investigates Francesca's murder, and then Beatrice's murder, it becomes clear that someone is targeting the Rosati family. As she interviews Cristina and the neighbours in Francesca's apartment house, she becomes convinced that the key to the murders lies in the past, in something that happened during the latter part of the war. With her own memories of what happened to her on Monte Volta during the German retreat mostly lost, Seraphina begins to wonder what really happened at the Villa Chimera eleven years ago.

Discussion

Chris Bohjalian has crafted a masterful piece of historical fiction that weaves three narratives together, incorporating two timelines that of 1943 and World War II in Italy, and the postwar period in 1955. These narratives, at first seemingly loosely connected become interwoven into the revealing climax. Readers should be advised that this is a very gruesome novel with some very graphic descriptions of murder and corpses.

The three narratives are masterfully woven to a suspenseful reveal and a satisfying ending. Both the narrative of the killer and the 1955 timeline occur over the span of several days, while the timeline of the past describes the events during the years 1943 and 1944.

The killer gives clues throughout their narrative that they know the area around Florence very well. It seems they might know the family well, at least they do know who of the Rosati family survived the war. These are not random murders. The murderer knows the tragedies the family experienced in 1944, that Francesca struggled with depression. They state that Beatrice Rosati was not named for Dante's muse, Bice de Folco Portinari but after her aunt who lived in Pienza. It's been eleven years since the fall of Italy which suggests that for one reason or another the killer has not been able to exact their revenge until now. As Paolo suggests, this person may have been in jail.

The 1943-1944 narrative presents the tragic story of the Rosati family during the latter part of the Nazi occupation of Italy and during the invasion by the Allies. The Rosati villa was once a thriving estate, but by 1943, most of the cattle have been confiscated by the government. The appearance of the Nazis at the Rosati villa is not welcomed by Antonio or Beatrice or their daughter-in-law, Francesca who is disgusted at the Germans. Soon more groups of Italian and German officers visit Villa Chimera to see the Etruscan tombs, believing they hold a clue to early Germanic and therefore Aryan history. By this time, against the advice of Francesca, Cristina has become romantically involved with a Nazi officer Frederich Strekker whom she doesn't consider to be like the other Nazis. Francesca warns her that he is no different from the others - he is a Nazi. In November 1943, as the battle up the boot of Italy rages, Francesca prophesies,  "My family, .. is commingling with the cowardly angels. We will pay. We will all pay."  By 1944, the grounds of the Villa Chimera are mostly destroyed, its grape arbors gone. The villa had been home to the tents, jeeps and guns of the Nazis who are now leaving with the British and Americans on their heels.  

When the partisan's arrive, with a very seriously injured girl, Beatrice immediately works to help her. Enrico, the leader of the partisans confronts Antonio who tells him that he had no choice but to work with the Nazis, and that the last few weeks they have been prisoners, stating that he is no blackshirt. However, the unexpected return of the Nazis and their discovery of a British rifle used by the partisans leads to catastrophe for the Rosati family.  Believing Marco is a partisan, they torture him, beat Antonia and learn that the partisans are hiding in the tombs. This sets in motion  a series of tragic events on the villa that ripple down eleven years later to 1955.

In the present, 1955, as Serafina investigates the murders of Francesca and Beatrice she comes to believe that their murders are somehow connected to the war years. Initially Serafina doesn't believe she was near Monte Volta when she was terribly injured. However, Serafina gradually regains her memories of those fateful days when she was badly burned by an incendiary grenade when she visits Villa Chimera. She remembers being inside the Etruscan tombs where she was ministered to and has vague memories of the paintings on the tomb walls. These memories are confirmed during an interview with Cristina and Vittore who tell her that initially she was taken to the kitchen of the villa. There Beatrice brought the last of the villa's olive oil and Francesca's face cream to help treat Serafina's burns. The Germans were fighting near the villa and then returned to the villa with the British in pursuit. The marchese and marchesa had Cristina take Serafina and the partisans to hide in the tombs. The Rosatis want the partisans to leave but the leaders of the partisans, Enrico and his wife Teresa believe the injured girl will not survive being moved and so they hide in the tombs. Only Serafina and Enrico will survive.

Bohjalian weaves each of the narratives to its inevitable conclusion; the 1943/1944 narrative reveals what really happened in the closing days of the Italian campaign, as the Germans retreated through Italy, pillaging and murdering, sparing neither the Rosati family nor their beloved villa. The 1955 narrative reveals both the connection to the 1943 narrative and the identity of the killer.

The author effectively captures the moral dilemmas people often encounter during war. This is done through several characters,  including Antonio, Francesca, and Cristina.  Antonio knew what the Nazis were but he cooperated in the hopes that he could protect his family and his villa. By 1944, with his villa in ruins, he regrets his choices and he is filled with self-loathing and wonders what he has done. " He had let this one soldier into his daughter's life. Then he had allied himself with the men his second son worked with in Florence. And suddenly he had found himself giving a personal tour of the Etruscan tombs to the Gestapo chief in Rome...Herbert Kappler. He had come to Monte Volta with an entourage that filled three staff cars. He'd spent the night in the guest room overlooking the swimming pool. Dined with the marchese's family on the small plenty that remained at the Villa Chimera, while SS troopers stood guard outside the villa..."  In some respects it appears Antonio is in denial. Herbert Kappler, Head of the Gestapo in Rome during the war, would likely have been well known to Antonio, Beatrice and Vittore. He was responsible for the deportation of Italian Jews to Auschwitz and later on for massacre of three hundred thirty-five Italians in the Ardeatine Caves. And Antonia held a ball in April for the Germans and Italians who worked at the Uffizzi. Even his son, Vittore saw that this was wrong and refused to attend. Although he tells Enrico Tarantolo, a partisan, he's no Blackshirt, it's not surprising that to the villagers, Antonio would have been considered a collaborator.  In the end Antonio finds that it did not save his villa or his family; attempting to appease evil never succeeds. 

Francesca also dislikes the Nazis and knows they are evil. She advises her sister-in-law, Cristina against becoming involved with a Nazi officer. When Marco is accused of being a partisan after the discovery of the British rifle at the villa and is tortured, it is Francesca who reveals where the partisans are hiding in the hopes of saving her beloved husband.  "Deranged by terror and loss and simple exhaustion, the abyssal descent into compromise, she found herself murmuring the answer in her head and trying to understand what would happen if she said the words aloud. In her mind's eye, she saw the captain pulling down his gun. Ordering his men to the tombs. And then...

Then what? Would Muller bother to ask her or her parents why the partisans were here on their property? And if he did ask, would he listen when one of them explained that the partisans had arrived the night before and there was nothing -- nothing at all -- the family could have done? " 

In desperation, Francesca reveals the partisan's hiding place but it does not save Marco. In an act of unspeakable cruelty, Captain Mullers brutally murders Marco in front of Francesca and their two young children. Her attempt to save her husband and her children results in the deaths of the partisans. The trauma of these events lead Francesca to a life of promiscuity as a way to cope. It is clear she is drowning in self-loathing, grief and pain. And sadly her betrayal of the partisans lead years later, to her own brutal murder and that of her mother-in-law. She is a truly tragic figure in the novel and demonstrate how compromise and capitulation can play out in war.

Cristina seems to have few reservations about her relationship with a Nazi officer during the war. She is young and her attraction to the young Frederich Strekker leads to a relationship that labels her in the village. Her actions so offend her brother Vitorre that he brawls with Frederich in Florence and confronts her. "Cristina, don't you see what the Germans are? They are even worse than our Fascists!... They are taking over the country, they're stealing our art. They hate us -- they hate everyone who isn't one of them! Who knows what they're really doing to the Jews, who knows what...."  But Cristina is convinced that Frederich isn't a part of that. Vittore tells Cristina that he and Marco do not have a choice but are forced to work with the Germans, while she has made the choice to associate with a Nazi. But Cristina isn't willing to consider that what she is doing is "collaborating". It seems that Cristina has suffered little consequences as a result of her actions during the war. There is no mention of any public shaming, although she had been living with her mother Beatrice and had not married. Although she never knew his fate after the war, Cristina never gave up hope that somehow he survived the war. 

Two German characters, Captain Oskar Muller and Colonel Erhard Decher portray the brutality of the Nazis. Muller brutally tortures and eventually kills Marco Rosati in front of his wife and children because Marco refused to reveal that the partisans are hidden on the villa grounds. Colonel Decher is similarily cruel and depraved: he orders the massacre of the villagers and their priest as a reprisal, having them bayoneted and then their bodies blown up. Hoping to escape responsibility for this war crime, he steals the dead Frederich Strekker's dog tags, replacing them with his own and his pay book so that the body will be identified as his. However, it is later revealed that Decher meets his end in a most fitting way in Budapest, although his body is identified as Strekker's.

The heroine of the novel is Serafina Bettini. Serafina's parents were murdered because her father was assistant to Dino Grandi who had led the failed coup against Mussolini in July 1943. Grandi was a Blackshirt and a supporter of Benito Mussolini but he did not support Italy's racial laws nor its involvment in World War II. Chairman of the Grand Council of Fascism, Grandi was able to engineer a vote that desposed Mussolini but soon after he escaped to Spain. It was after this that Serafina's parents were murdered by the Nazis. Serafina and her brothers fled north from Rome and ended up with the partisans. For five months they stayed with them but Serafina became separated from her brothers when the Nazis began search the area around Mount Amiata. She survived by hiding with two men in a shed on a tenant farm but her brothers did not. Serafina believes the villa they were on was near Trequanda. 

After joining up with the partisans, Serafina was badly burned during a battle and taken to the Villa Chimera. Against all odds she survived, badly scarred on her right side of her head, neck and back. Serafina is unable to raise her arm above her head. In the post-war she changed her name to Serafina and was able to be hired on by the Florence police. She lives with Milton, a gay man who treats her with tenderness. It is also obvious that Seraphina is traumatized by her war experience, as she frequently self-harms. Although her partner,  It is Seraphina who quickly and astutely begins to consider that the murders of the Rosati women might somehow be related to the war. Eventually she confronts the killer, almost losing her life in the process.

The Light In the Ruins is a masterful piece of fiction that especially portrays the brutality of war on a personal level. This novel had its genesis after Chris Bohjalian read Iris Origo's memoir, War in Val d'Orcia which describes life in Tuscany during the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland. While the village of Monte Volta is fictional, as are many of the characters, some like Herbert Kappler (who was famously challenged by Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty), and Dino Grandi are not. 

Well-written, suspenseful, fans of Chris Bohjalian will enjoy this historical mystery.

Book Details:
The Light In The Ruins by Chris Bohjalian
New York: Doubleday Publishers    2013
320 pp.