Warburg in Rome

May 5, 2014
Carroll, who explored the history of Catholic anti-Semitism in the nonfiction account Constantine’s Sword, returns to this theme with a suspenseful historical drama set in Rome at the end of WWII and centering on Vatican complicity in the flight of Nazi fugitives to Argentina. David Warburg, a U.S. Treasury Department lawyer, is sent to the city to organize the War Refugee Board, a front for aiding Jewish refugees and helping to create their hoped-for homeland in Palestine. While in Rome, Warburg meets ruthless OSS counterintelligence head Col. Peter Mates, who is opposing Soviet domination of Central Europe through covert means. Warburg and Mates draw Father Kevin Deane, an American priest, and Marguerite d’Erasmo, a French-Italian Red Cross worker, into their plans, not realizing that both have hidden allegiances and motives. As Carroll cleverly weaves these characters among an assortment of liars, schemers, and charlatans, one character sums it all up: “None of us here is innocent.” While high-placed Catholic officials aid escaped war criminals, other factions seek revenge for wartime brutality, and still others begin the bloody struggle for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. And at the heart of all the treachery, murder, and tragedy is the Eternal City. Agent: Don Cutler, Bookmark Literary Agency.

July 1, 2014
A well-paced thriller from longtime Vatican watcher Carroll (Crusade, 2004, etc.) set in post-World War II Rome, with the Catholic Church athwart a tangle of scandalous politics and incriminating deeds."Sanctuary, Sister, is for the guilty. We may not like it, but there it is." So remarks an American monsignor, Kevin Deane, who's working to provide relief to Italian Jews, even as others in the Vatican are seeking to extend that sanctuary to their Nazi persecutors. Into this conflict comes refugee coordinator David Warburg, a confidant of Henry Morgenthau, who has warned him that "[o]nce Mark Clark captures it, Rome will be the nerve center and the escape hatch both." If Morgenthau only knew how deeply tunneled that escape hatch was....Helping Warburg-or is she?-is a Red Cross worker named Marguerite d'Erasmo, who "came of age as if she were a nun" but who has hidden resources, to say nothing of secrets. Marguerite is a person of faith much shaken, for this is a time in which "the Madonna seemed indifferent to everyone but her Son," while Warburg is a coolly efficient explorer of the surprising alleys his quest takes him down-not just the Vatican "ratline" that sweeps Nazis out of the path of the conquering Allies (Rome, as Warburg sees it, is "halfway between Vienna and Buenos Aires"), but also a complex storyline that finds highly placed elements within the Vatican opposing Jewish immigration to Palestine on the grounds that by doing so, they are helping to preserve the Holy Land, even as others are aligned with the revived cause of Zionism. Carroll blends a solid command of modern history with a sense for the varieties of evil that have inhabited it-not just the villains, but also the bureaucrats who have self-servingly helped them along and the apologists who have made the world safe for both classes of people.Though without the white-knuckle tension of Graham Greene's The Third Man, a yarn that's of a piece with it-and a worthy successor.

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Starred review from May 1, 2014
Carroll, winner of the National Book Award for An American Requiem (1996) and the PEN/Galbraith Award for House of War (2006), both nonfiction, has also written numerous novels in multiple genres. Here he combines fact and fiction in a historical thriller. Carroll makes clear in an author's note that, while the main characters and their story are fictional, everything else in the book, centering on the treatment of Italian Jews during and after WWII, and including a Vatican plot called the ratline, which secretly relocated Nazi war criminals to Argentina, is based on fact. This author's note, which appears at the end of the novel, might have been better placed at the beginning, since what Carroll describes is so horrifying (as in details on a children's concentration camp) as to seem fictional. The man who encounters this tangle of evil is David Warburg, sent to Rome by the U.S. War Refugee Board at the end of WWII to help bring aid to the European Jews arriving in Rome. Warburg has two guides to the inferno of postwar Rome: a woman Red Cross worker and a young American priest. Their efforts are met, first with bureaucratic roadblocks, and later with full-out betrayal. Carroll's depictions of the chaos in Rome, along with his insights into the Vatican ratline, are unforgettable. Recommend this utterly engaging thriller to fans of Joseph Kanon's The Good German (2001) and James R. Benn's Death's Door (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2014

Carroll left the priesthood to become a writer, and we can be glad he did; his books include the National Book Award winner An American Requiem and the New York Times best-selling Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews. In this new novel, set in post-World War II Rome, he expands on themes in Constantine's Sword to examine Catholic complicity in the fate of the Jews. David Warburg, just designated director of the U.S. War Refugee Board, arrives in Rome eager to help the displaced Jews now crowding the city. He's dismayed to learn that the Church has allowed many Nazi criminals to escape the Continent--and that U.S. intelligence knows. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

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July 1, 2014

Former priest Carroll (An American Requiem) returns with this complex and compelling novel of the Vatican and morality during World War II. The happenings here are dark indeed, and it's often difficult to believe that the novel is based on real-life events. Lawyer David Warburg comes to Rome to help set up and direct the new U.S. War Refugee Board, an effort that aims to help European Jews rebuild their lives as the war comes to a close. In the course of his humanitarian work, he meets Marguerite d'Erasmo, a Red Cross worker who is motivated by much more than meets the eye. Soon David learns of the Vatican ratline, a system that the Church used to smuggle Nazi war criminals to safety in Argentina. No longer sure whom to trust, he turns to U.S. Intelligence, only to find that the ratline isn't much of a secret after all. VERDICT This is a fresh look at a scandalous chapter of history, and one that reminds us that even when the war was over, the horrors were not. Sensitive readers should beware, as there are some graphic and extremely unsettling scenes. This book deserves a wide readership, and should especially appeal to readers interested in political and religious history. [See Prepub Alert, 1/26/14; academic and library marketing.]--Liz Kirchhoff, Barrington Area Lib., IL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.