Red Sky at Noon
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines—but is there a traitor among them? The only thing Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find no mercy in onslaught of Hitler’s troops as they push East.Spanning ten epic days, between Benya’s war on the grasslands of southern Russia and Stalin’s intrigues in the Kremlin, between Benya’s intense affair with an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin’s daughter and a war correspondent, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery, and survival—where betrayal is a constant companion, death just a heartbeat away, and love, however fleeting, offers a glimmer of redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Montefiore's third novel in his Moscow Trilogy (after Sashenka and One Night in Winter) is a stunning World War II story set on the bloody Russian front outside Stalingrad in July 1942. Benya Golden is a Jewish writer and political prisoner unjustly convicted of treason and sentenced to 10 years in the gulag. Stalin organizes criminals, convicts, and political prisoners into penal battalions known as Smertniki, the Dead Ones, who are thrown into battle as cannon fodder to be redeemed only by combat death or wounds. Benya is assigned to a penal Cossack cavalry regiment that becomes trapped behind enemy lines after a disastrous frontal assault. Only Benya and six other men survive the attack. They link up with a band of partisans, not knowing they are part of a high-level Russian deception plan involving Stalingrad's defense. Ambush, capture, escape, interrogation, and execution await the Smertniki, as the Germans and their Axis allies and the Russians slaughter each other. Benya's brief, intense romance with an Italian nurse gives him hope where he expects only death, but there is one more mission he must complete before his life is redeemed. (Stalin and his daughter Svetlana play a role in this story, too.) Montefiore's immersive portrayal of the Eastern Front makes this a gripping, convincing tale.
