ROME UNDER THE NAZI HEEL: Italy has surrendered, Hitler’s forces have moved in – and so has a vast hidden network of escaped Allied prisoners of war. And somewhere in the city is a spy…out to wreak havoc when Rome is liberated. John “Jay Mack” MacPherson, an American major, leads the hidden POW organization with his contact, the gentle Father Francesco, a priest in a church on Vatican soil. Jay shares a billet with former POWs Buck Nolan, a plain-spoken GI, and David Lawrence, a British RAF Flight Lieutenant, in the home of Maria, a lovely Roman with whom Jay falls in love. When Maria is arrested for harboring POWs, an offense punishable by death, Jay’s grief knows no bounds. The three move their billet to the art-filled villa of Adriana, a rich socialite with a lover in the German officer corps and a son and daughter in the Resistance. Vittoria, her daughter, is an expert bomb-maker who inadvertently dooms her boyfriend and fellow partisan, Renzo, a survivor of the roundup of the Roman Jews, to a fateful mistake the night before a bold attack on an SS police column. The raid goes awry and Rome’s Gestapo chief, Herbert Kappler, is called upon to carry out a gruesome reprisal on hundreds of innocent Romans. Nazis and fascists, partisans and POWs in hiding – all await the liberation of the city, some with fear, others with hope. And among them, Jay realizes, lurks a spy, poised to betray the entire POW network when the American army enters Rome. When Rome Falls blends historical facts with fictional characters to deliver a fast-paced tale of breathtaking intrigue and razor-sharp plot twists. "Not only are the characters well defined, but I loved the fast pace of the action and the fact that the events in When Rome Falls are based on fascinating true history. Homer has a talent for weaving a number of seemingly-unrelated threads that come together in an ending that is both shocking and exciting. Combining adventure and romance, When Rome Falls will appeal to a wide audience. I highly recommend this well-crafted book." --Midwest Book Review I spent many months researching the nine months when Rome was occupied by Germany, Italy's former ally. During the occupation, Allied POWs flooded into the city to hide when their Italian guards walked off the job, Italian fascists continued their collaboration with the Nazis, the Resistance fought the enemy with cunning and valor, and the Roman Jewish community endured a brutal roundup. I met a relative of a heroine of the Roman Resistance, and in the Jewish ghetto I spoke with a survivor of the roundup who had lost his whole family. I also had a private tour of the former Gestapo headquarters by the director of the Museum of the Liberation of Rome and I visited the Regina Coeli Jail, where Jews and Resistance members were imprisoned, Fort Bravetta, where they were shot, and the Ardeatine Caves, where 335 innocent men and boys were murdered in reprisal for a an attack on a German column. All the while I kept thinking, "This is a story that must be told." A. R. Homer is the award-winning author of six historical novels. His latest is Through the Dark Clouds Shining: A Saga of Families and the Great War.