The tower of Monte Rado rears extravagantly from its rocky promontory above the Tuscan plain; nestling immediately below it, the village with its tiny cemetery. To today's tourists it is just another picturesque Italian castle, but three grayes set apart in the cemetery sometimes catch their attention. This is the story of the two men and the girl who are buried there: Ferguson and MacGregor, survivors of a commando raid on the Italian coast, and Maggie MacLean, a young student working with the partisans. It is a story of loyalty, daring and sacrifice; of how the three Britons came to be in this remote mountain village with its shrewd old priest and dour inhabitants; of their struggle to save it from becoming a second Monte Cassino; of how all of them found love there in their own way; and of the part the village itself played in World War II. It is also a story of the bagpipes which Corporal MacGregor played with such devotion and which, in the minds of the villagers, represented all that their visitors stood for — since, as the Italian guide told his tourist party: 'Dey were all tree Scotch, like de whisky.'
This is a moving and exciting novel. The author is never afraid to be thought romantic, yet her knowledge of the background she describes ensures that her story is as convincing as it is gripping. It is writers like Sheila Ross who prove triumphantly that the traditional arts of the storyteller will survive as long as mankind itself.