A Hero of Two Worlds

“A Hero of Two Worlds” is a book of sweeping historical fiction set in Rome in the early 1860s, when the great fight to transform Italy into a country was raging. It traces the life of a young American sculptor named Rufus Trask from his arrival there in 1847 to his soldiering in the Union Army in the American Civil War sixteen years later. The story offers a rich portrait of life in Rome's American expatriot community, teeming with talented artists and louche flaneurs, intrigue and illicit affairs. It also plumbs Trask's double life as a carefree American devoted to his craft and a deadly fighter with republicans bent on ending authoritarian papal rule. He surfaces in Rome as the republican drums are beating across Europe: Down with the monarchies, up with republican democracies. He is in the streets when republicans chase Pope Pius IX out of the city. Trask becomes a hunted man and escapes to a remote mountain village, where he falls in love. He returns to Rome, where his life collapses as he spars with pap