Like so many Board members, I have particpated in the fits of calculation we've gone through about the year(s) of the war, of Sonny's murder, of the Don's meeting, and Michael's time in Sicily and subsequent return, not to mention the dons' massacre. Maybe we can put a good part of it to rest.

Just as we notice something in the films that we didn't notice before, I notice things in the novel that I never noticed before. This is one. It takes place as the last paragraph where Puzo describes the last time Michael and Kay see each other before Sicily:

"She had never felt so close to him, never so much in love and if someone had told her she would not see Michael again until three years passed, she would not have been able to bear the anguish of it."

So, Michael murders Sollozzo in January '46? Do the math.

Excellent find. This would make Michael's return 1949 like I initially believed.

But considering all the facts, arguments and inconsistenties I've already made my conclusions.

Mike flees to Sicily in January 1946. Vito returns home in late March 1946 (newspaper article states he was in the hospital for twelve weeks). Sonny is killed in August or September 1946. Michael returns in September 1947. Michael reunites with Kay in Oktober 1948 (In the film it was Autumn and he was back for more than a year).

Sonny was driving a 1941 Lincoln Continental. The radio in the car supposedly was broadcasting "The Shot Heard Round the World"--the final baseball game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers in October 1951. That would mean that Sonny was driving a 10-year-old car. Uh-uh.

These are movie mistakes which have not so much to do with the novel.

Another little timeline that has to fit is that of Felix Bocchicchio. It seems that he had to do most of his three years for fraud during the war years, then has a year where he sits quietly stays at home (and "shoots" Sollozzo/McCluskey); then actually shoots the conspirators against him and goes though trial, appeals, and execution. It would be interesting to see how fast the system could turn a shooting of a police officer into an execution in the late forties.

That plays further havoc with the timeline.

If Michael departed America in early 1946, then he's in Sicily for almost all of 1946, all of 47, 48, 49, 50, and most of 51. As the novel says, it would take Vito another year to bring Michael home. We are talking most of 7 years in Sicily. I'm not going for it.