Author(s): Kevin Beardsley

Fiction

In 1944, Nonno Benogetti, a sixteen-year-old shepherd, was falsely accused of conniving with the Germans against the Partisans and was about to be executed by the local Partisans in the valley below the farmhouse where he lived, when he is saved by a New Zealand soldier who was on patrol in the area. He lived with his mother in a large farmhouse with two other families in the Apennines above the town of Gubbio in Italy. He and his mother are convinced that his miraculous escape from death was because the patron saint of the area, Sant'Ubaldo, had intervened on his behalf. In 2013, Nonno, now retired, still lives in the farmhouse with his married daughter, son-in-law, and grandson. The grandson who works in the bar and cafe near the church of Sant'Ubaldo above Gubbio is selling drugs, supplied to him by a member of one of the families that used to live on the farm back in 1944. A New Zealand young farmer on a farming scholarship with the same name as the soldier who saved him from the Partisans all those years ago is living with Nonno for a few weeks. Nonno is intrigued when a father and daughter with the same name as a German soldier deserter, who he and his mother once hid from the Germans, comes to stay in one of the family units in the large farmhouse. He becomes alarmed when he learns that the man who is supplying his grandson with drugs has the same name as one of the families who once lived in the farmhouse with him in 1944. Another grandson of Nonno is a detective in Rome who is engaged in a case involving the murder of a prominent judge. There appears to be no definite leads, until the body of a prosecuting attorney is found in the Tiber River. Both he and the judge had been involved in a drug and gangster case involving a well-known criminal family in which a prominent member of the family was found guilty. At first it is thought the murders might have been committed by some of the gang that remain at large, until it is obvious when several attempt on the detective's life were made that the culprits were more likely be members of the family run by someone called the General. After following several leads, Nonno's grandson detective follows a lead that brings him to Gubbio. He is unaware that while he seeks his quarry, others seek him and are not far behind him. Nonno is convinced that when the chase is taking place in the valley where he was saved by Sant'Ubaldo that his grandson detective will also be saved by the patron saint of the area. He hears pistol shots followed by the sound of a high-powdered rifle coming from among the trees below in the valley and wonders if the saint has deserted him.