Richard Trigilio's first novel tells the story of a young Catholic priest who is temporarily assigned to a small Italian village in the middle of World War II. When the German army occupies the village for its strategic location, they arrest the Jewish-Italian families living there, picking up the parents but overlooking the children. It is now up to the priest to protect the children and prevent them from also falling into German hands. The priest eventually moves the children to an island sanctuary thought to be away from German-occupied territory. Along the way, they are joined by another Italian teenager, a young Austrian conscript, and a strange boy who has been living alone on the island. With the Allies advancing up the Italian peninsula from the south, the Germans arrive at the island to set up a radar station to detect incoming aircraft. The priest and the children, along with a small band of American soldiers, attempt to thwart the German plans.
As a follow up to Father Guido's Army, Richard Trigilio's next novel tells another story centered around the closing days of World War II. Julianna de Conte, a member of the Italian Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Italy, is captured and sent north to a concentration camp. While at the camp, a Nazi officer becomes infatuated with Julianna and secretly gives her special treatment. When the camp is hit by a wayward bomb, Julianna, in the ensuing confusion, ends up at a barracks occupied by a group of allied air corps officers. She is hidden by the airmen and joins them when the group is later moved to another camp. On the way to their new camp, several airmen escape along with Julianna. After her escape, she joins up with an American pilot and proceeds to travel through Germany trying to elude the pursuing Nazis. Meanwhile, the infatuated Nazi officer leads the pursuit in an effort to recapture the woman he loves.
Zakyla and the Cross is the third novel in the Father Guido series set within the backdrop of World War II. Each successive novel features one or more characters from the previous story. In the first book, Father Guido’s Army, the priest is the main protagonist as he rescues several Italian-Jewish children from the Nazis who occupy his country village. Chasing Julianna, the second novel in the series, features the sister of one of the principal characters in the first book. She escapes from a concentration camp and flees across Germany attempting to elude a lovelorn camp commander. Zakyla and the Cross features a young girl who appears in book two as an orphaned Jewish teenager. Zakyla goes to Israel and joins the Israeli secret service. She then partners with an American Intelligence Agent as they attempt to thwart a post-war plot involving stolen art, including a religious artifact taken from Father Guido’s church.