The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon

She put her family in danger. She would risk her life to atone for it…

Florence, 1943. As the bells toll in the solemn dark streets and enemy soldiers loiter by the city’s beautiful bridges, schoolgirl Gabriella is racked with guilt. She is ashamed of the crush she had on the soldier with raven-black hair, a crush that allowed a secret notebook to fall into the hands of the enemy. As a result, men in uniform have come for her family. Her father is arrested and her younger brother Riccardo devastatingly injured. Faced with her brother’s haunted eyes and the prospect of never seeing her father again, Gabriella is determined to make things right. She seeks out her old schoolfriend Stefanina, an unlikely member of the Italian resistance with her beautiful curls and scarlet ribbon.

Soon Gabriella is riding her rusty black bicycle, criss-crossing the river with deadly information in her basket, and learning everything she can from Stefanina. But one terrible day, Stefanina doesn’t appear at their meeting point and Gabriella, desperate to find her, goes where she shouldn’t, into the shadowed corners of the city…

Years later Sofia, mourning the loss of her famous painter father Riccardo, carries out his last request to find his long-lost sister Gabriella in Florence. When she meets her aunt, an elegant old woman living in a palazzo filled with roses, she is shocked when Gabriella tells her about the dark stories behind her father’s art. And when Sofia learns of a missing painting, a picture that has not surfaced since the war, a shocking and tragic story begins to unfold – the story of an independent, courageous young woman, with a scarlet ribbon in her dark hair, whose youth and beauty was no protection from the enemy. Will Sofia finally understand why her father could never speak about the war, and piece together the shocking events that inspired his missing painting?

A completely compelling and heartbreaking story of a beautiful city, a violent war and the extraordinary bravery of a daring young woman. Fans of The Alice Network, The Nightingale and My Name is Eva will be captivated by The Girl with the Scarlet Ribbon.