Gallery — John Horne Burns

Portraits and Promenades

It was the riddle of war, of human dignity, of love, of life itself. Some came closer than others to solving it. But all the people in the Galleria were human beings in the middle of a war.

It is August, 1944, in the heart of Naples. Sooner or later everyone -- the Neapolitans, the Americans and British -- must pass through the Galleria Umberto as they seek the answer to the riddle of war. Moe the taxi driver might find it with his Maria. Guilia and her American captain guess at it the night they part. Michael Patrick gropes for it before the long truck ride back to the war in Florence. Others would not find the answer. Through all of it a lone young man would wander and tell all their stories.