There are many angles an author can explore when writ­ing about the hor­rif­ic events of World War II and the Holo­caust. In his lat­est nov­el, The Curse of Pietro Hou­di­ni, author Derek B. Miller takes an unusu­al and cap­ti­vat­ing approach: he high­lights the Nazis’ attack on Italy and the country’s his­toric art and architecture. 

The set­ting of the book is a Bene­dic­tine abbey near Mon­te­cassi­no, Italy. It is 1944, and the Allied forces are try­ing to push back the Ger­man army. Miller tells the sto­ry of a major mil­i­tary oper­a­tion that has gone most­ly unno­ticed. It is not a hero­ic sto­ry, like the attack at Nor­mandy Beach. In this instance, Amer­i­can pilots, mis­tak­en­ly believ­ing the monastery to be occu­pied by Nazi forces, dropped more bombs on this build­ing than any oth­er sin­gle build­ing dur­ing the war. The bat­tle raged on for months, killing many peo­ple. Just the year before, thou­sands of irre­place­able man­u­scripts, paint­ings, and oth­er art had been hid­den in the abbey for safe­keep­ing. Two offi­cers, a Ger­man and an Aus­tri­an, worked with the monks to load much of the art onto carts and move it out to Rome ahead of the invasion.

The book fol­lows two pro­tag­o­nists, Pietro Hou­di­ni and the young per­son he res­cued from a gut­ter, as they approach Mon­te­cassi­no Abbey. As his name implies, Hou­di­ni is a mas­ter of illu­sion. He is a larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter who, by his own descrip­tion, claims to be the ​“mas­ter artist and con­fi­dant of the Vat­i­can.” His assis­tant is Mas­si­mo, a four­teen-year-old orphan whose par­ents were killed dur­ing a bomb­ing in Rome. Both of these char­ac­ters — along with the many oth­ers they encounter dur­ing their jour­ney — have some­thing to hide.

Mas­si­mo is the nar­ra­tor of this sto­ry, recount­ing the cir­cum­stances that brought them to Mon­te­cassi­no and the expe­ri­ences that led Hou­di­ni to per­form the stunts he did. Hou­di­ni edu­cates Mas­si­mo in the art of mis­di­rec­tion and sleight of hand in order to save the art­work hid­den in the monastery. Through­out their tri­als and tribu­la­tions, they are joined by a monk, a cafe own­er who will mur­der to pro­tect her fam­i­ly, a nurse with a past to con­ceal, and a wound­ed Ger­man sol­dier who does not want to return to bat­tle. The group becomes, in the author’s words, ​“a posse of mis­fits who had noth­ing in com­mon but a gener­ic and shared com­pul­sion to keep on liv­ing.” Togeth­er, they will try to thwart the Nazis and save others.

The Curse of Pietro Hou­di­ni is a rich work of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion pro­pelled by high-stakes risks and pow­er­ful bonds. Though the art­work depict­ed in the nov­el is fic­ti­tious, Miller is able to shed light on a real mas­ter­piece and an amaz­ing, lit­tle-known piece of history.