PRAISE FOR The Last Green Valley
“Mark Sullivan has done it again! The Last Green Valley is a compelling and inspiring story of heroism and courage in the dark days at the end of World War II. Fans of Beneath a Scarlet Sky will savor this novel based on an extraordinary and little-known tale of the war and its aftermath.”
—Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone
“Mark Sullivan weaves together history and memory in an epic journey of love and resilience. One of the most riveting, page-turning books I’ve read in a long time.”
—Heather Morris, author of the #1 international and New York Times bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz
“Sullivan again demonstrates his gift for finding little-known embers of history and breathing life into them until they glow and shine in ways that are both moving and memorable.”
—Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris
ALSO BY MARK SULLIVAN
Beneath a Scarlet Sky
Thief
Outlaw
Rogue
The Rogue Genesis Trilogy
Triple Cross
The Serpent’s Kiss/The Second Woman
Labyrinth
Ghost Dance
The Purification Ceremony
Hard News
The Fall Line
With James Patterson
Private Games
Private Berlin
Private L.A.
Private Paris
The Games
Though based on a true story and real characters, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2021 by Suspense Inc
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503958760 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1503958760 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781503958746 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1503958744 (paperback)
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
Interior images courtesy of the Martel family.
First edition
For all the grateful refugees who renew this nation every day.
CONTENTS
START READING
PREFACE
PART ONE: THE LONG TREK
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
PART TWO: THE PURE BLOODS
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
PART THREE: THROWN TO THE WIND AND THE WOLVES
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
PART FOUR: A TALE OF TWO PRISONERS
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
PART FIVE: THE LAST GREEN VALLEY
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
AFTERWORD
DISCUSSION GUIDE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With love in our hearts, there is nothing we cannot overcome.
—Chen Yeng
PREFACE
People told me I would never find another untold World War II story like that of Pino Lella, the hero and basis of my historical novel Beneath a Scarlet Sky. I honestly believed I would, however, and paid close attention to the dozens of letters and pitches I received from people telling me other stories from that time period.
They were all wonderfully interesting in their way. But none of them matched my criteria, which were that the underlying tale had to be inherently moving, inspiring, and potentially transformative to me and so to readers.
Then, in November 2017, I was asked to speak about Pino to the noontime Rotary Club in my hometown of Bozeman, Montana. A retired dentist came up to me afterward to outline a story a local man had told him. It caught my attention immediately.
Two days later, I put the man’s address in my GPS and saw it was less than two miles from my own. The closer I got, I felt odd, and I had no idea why. It wasn’t until I pulled into his driveway and got out of my car that I realized I was no more than two hundred yards away from the home where I’d first heard Pino Lella’s story nearly eleven years before. That story changed my life.
I went to the door, knocked, and my life changed again.
Within fifteen minutes of listening to the particulars of the story of the Martel family, I was more than interested. By the end of two hours, I believed I had a tale to tell that would be a worthy successor to the tale that inspired Beneath. And I’d heard it in the same little neighborhood where I’d first heard Pino’s story. What were the odds of that?
For the next fifteen months after that first meeting, I interviewed survivors and researched and traveled to critical locations in the story, including the ruins of an abandoned farmhouse in deeply rural, far-western Ukraine. From there, I retraced the dangerous and remarkable journey of a young family of refugees on the run westward in a wagon with two horses, often caught between the retreating German armies and the advancing Soviets in the final chaotic year of World War II.
I trailed the Martels’ route through present-day Moldova, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland, where the way split: one continuing west and another doubling back east more than eleven hundred miles to the former site of a deadly Soviet POW camp set in the bleak postwar rubble near the Ukrainian border with Belarus.
Along the way, I interviewed participants and eyewitnesses to the “Long Trek,” as well as Holocaust, military, and refugee historians, who helped me to understand the context in which the Martels’ story unfolded and why. I also listened to the recordings of people, long dead, describing the ordeal and felt in awe of the grit, humanity, and spirit they showed in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges and odds.
Even though I had all that information and understanding when I sat down to write this book, there were holes in the tale not completely explained by the limited material I had to rely on.
To bridge those gaps, I have been forced to draw on
