The Last Green Valley

by Mark T. Sullivan

inspired

... "inspired" is interesting choice of words.

And I’d heard it in the same little neighborhood where I’d first heard Pino’s story. What were the odds of that?

So serendipitous. 🙄😆

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 my own suspicions and imagination to bring the story more fully to life. What you are about to read, then, is not narrative nonfiction, but historical fiction based on an extraordinary tale of World War II and its aftermath.

Holes no doubt large enough through which one might drive an oil tanker or, in his case, contrive fiction to his heart's content.

Sounds like an almost copy-paste to remarks he made in relation to Lella. Unoriginal.

He did kill himself before his trial at Nuremberg.

Odd wording here that, along with the rest, neatly evades the topic of creativity because of course no one knows more than bare outlines and whether he's falsely injecting this person into the Martel personal orbit.

Himmler was reportedly so shocked, he vomited, and later issued an order that no one be killed or sent to a concentration camp for refusing to murder Jews. He wanted true believers behind the guns.

tried to claim they were forced to participate in the Holocaust, that they had no choice at all.

Once again, echoes of "Beneath" and the fib he put in Valentin Schmitz-not-Schmidt's mouth.

Historians believe that western Allied soldiers may have raped as many as eighty thousand German and ethnic German women during the last part of the war and its immediate aftermath. They believe Soviet soldiers may have raped more than one million German women in that same time period.

Beginning in 1952, as the Iron Curtain lowered and as part of an effort to stop people in East Germany from fleeing west, the border at Oebisfelde where Adeline ran for freedom was hardened to include watch towers, fences, walls, anti-tank ditches, and minefields.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and Germany’s reunification, the fortifications were torn down, and the fields she and her sons crossed were restored enough that I was able to walk much of Adeline and the boys’ escape ro...

found the city hall where Emil had eaten and the hospital he’d helped rebuild.

Like Noreika in Lithuania ... [...].

God: mentioned ~150 times. I assure you this was the author's preference alone.

Notice how there are zero quotes?

Who knows if this is true. See comparable but shorter nonsense in "Beneath" regarding, e.g., Mimmo.

The Martel family, before the Nazi invasion, Pervomaisk, Ukraine, March 1941.

The Martels, shortly after being reunited, Alfeld, western Germany, March 1947.

inspired by a true story. Do you feel that the story is authentic? How well do you think the author told a compelling story while also sticking to historical facts?

Florin Burgui, was able to track down a handful of people who either survived or witnessed the Long Trek of ethnic German refugees in the spring of 1944.

by the works of

Silvia Lass-Adelmann was my translator for research at the Political Archives of the German Foreign Office in Berlin concerning the Long Trek. I was also helped by archivists at the Romanian National Archives in Bucharest, at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.

Ah! Silvia again. ... and this time he mentions "archivists" at USHMM and YV.

I am blessed to have gone to O&O Academy in India to learn the principles of the spiritual philosophy of “Oneness” from my incredible teachers Krishnaji, Preethaji, and Kumarji. All three sages ended up influencing my depiction of the character Private Kumar. My experience at O&O also informed many other parts of this book and ultimately changed my life for the better. Bless you all.

Thank you to my early readers: Damian Slattery, Connor Sullivan,...

#1 Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky, which has been translated into thirty-seven languages and will soon be a limited television series starring Tom Holland.

Likely not....