'Red Sky at Noon' recounts Soviets vs. Nazis in WWII

"Red Sky at Noon," by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Pegasus Books, 397 pages, $25.95).

DAYTON, Ohio -- Simon Sebag Montefiore's novel "Red Sky at Noon" proves once again that his encyclopedic knowledge of Russian history gives his stories a gripping vibrancy.

In June 1941 after the Soviet Union's alliance with Nazi Germany had collapsed, the Germans swept into the territory of their former ally with devastating speed. The Soviet leader Stalin was desperate to come up with any scheme to reverse the tide of war.

After the Soviets repulsed a German invasion of Moscow, Hitler hoped to deliver a crippling blow elsewhere. "Red Sky at Noon" takes place just prior to the pivotal siege of Stalingrad. The central character in this tale is a Russian writer named Benya Golden, and it unfolds over a 10-day period during July and August of 1942.

Stalin's system of gulags contained massive numbers of prisoners who were being sent to the front lines to try to hold back the German assault. Their chances of survival were virtually nil. If they performed heroic feats while protecting the USSR and somehow lived to tell about it, their prison sentences might be commuted.

Benya is one of those convicts. As the story opens he has become a member of a cavalry unit that is being sent behind enemy lines to locate and kill a Russian militia leader who has been collaborating with the Germans. The horsemen with Benya include a former Soviet general. They are all convicts.

We flash back to Benya's incarceration. It is a miracle he is there at all. Benya is a political prisoner and he had been sent to toil in the mines in an area where overwork and frigid conditions made the typical life expectancy for most prisoners a matter of a few weeks.

Benya's miraculous survival in the camps came about after he was rescued from the mines by another prisoner, a doctor, who nurses Benya back to health then gets him lighter duties working for a powerful criminal overlord who lives a life of privilege within the gulag.

Now Benya, who has no experience with horses, finds himself astride a beautiful steed named Silver Socks, riding into battle alongside a group of vicious criminals. Most of his comrades are Cossack warriors who have been riding their whole lives. Benya's peculiar involvement with this Cossack cavalry unit is even more unusual because Benya is Jewish, and many Cossacks held Jews in contempt. Benya has a lot to prove.

Montefiore has another story line going here as well. In Moscow, Stalin's teenage daughter was falling in love with a journalist.

Svetlana Stalin lives in a lonely and isolated world and her forbidden romance was doomed from the start. This isn't the only love story in "Red Sky at Noon." Benya has a passionate and incredibly brief romance with an Italian nurse.

Benya is a lucky fellow. There's a twist at the end of the story that is by turns satisfying and heartbreaking. In the end love does win out.

Vick Mickunas writes for the Dayton Daily News. Email: vick(at)vickmickunas.com. Mickunas interviews authors every weekend on WYSO-FM in Yellow Springs, Ohio. For more information, visit www.wyso.org/programs/book-nook.

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