1944: The Germans now occupy Italy. It is brutal. A Jewish family from Florence has fled south to Gubbio, a medieval hill town in Umbria. When their three sons are slaughtered, a priest hides the family at great risk to himself. Then, when Italian partisans kill a Nazi officer, Hitler demands that 40 innocent townspeople be executed.
2024: Detective Ari Greene, the only Jewish cop on the Toronto homicide squad, is the son of Yitzhak Greene, a wise Holocaust survivor. Yitzhak has a deep secret: how he sought revenge after the war and now he’s ready to tell all to his 20-year-old granddaughter.
To research this, his seventh novel in the Ari Greene series, author Robert Rotenberg spent years interviewing survivors and veterans, did extensive research about Italy during and after the war, traveled to Gubbio to meet the now 94-year- old priest, and visited the shrine to the 40 martyrs. Much more than a simple murder mystery, What We Buried asks the difficult question: where is the line between justice and revenge?
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