ANIMALS OF THE ALPINE FRONT – ZANCANELLA

Information

Author:

Don Zancanella

Date:

Delphinium Book
August 2024

Author:

Additional Info

ANIMALS OF THE ALPINE FRONT

Rights Holder: Delphinium Book
Original Language: English

From a remote village near border between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire unrolls the intimate story of Teresa and Carlo, two young people whose paths cross and recross as they are first impelled by parents, then forced by sweeping world events to leave their childhood homes for lives they never imagined.

Having left her mother and cherished dog Allucio, in Ulfano, Teresa works as a domestic servant in a large villa in Trento. She survives the Great War in the occupied city by banding together in a makeshift family with the other servants of the owners who have fled to escape the occupation. Carlo, an American who is still new to Italy and who speaks barely passable Italian, is just finding his footing in Trento, when he’s dragged from bed at his boarding school, along with his classmates, and conscripted by the invading Austrian army. In a comical twist of fate, Carlo’s childhood near the Colorado gold mines motivates his captors to place him with a company of miners tasked with digging entrenchments and bunkers in order to carve a massive fortress out of stone and ice, even as blizzards rage and artillery shells fall from the sky. Out of sheer loneliness, Carlo writes letters to Teresa, the girl he met only once in Trento.

After the war, Carlo returns to Trento and reconnects with Teresa. Times are unsettled, as soldiers and those who fled the war flood back to the city and signs of the impending In fluenza epidemic appear. With so much chaos, tradition gives way to new ideas, so neither worries about the consequences of their growing attachment. However, the same independence that has them dreaming of a future that didn’t exist when they were children, may pull them apart forever

Don Zancanella is the author of Concord and A Storm in the Stars. He won the John S. Simmons/Iowa Short Fiction Award and an O.Henry Prize. One of his stories was cited as a distinguished story of the year in the 2019 Best American Short Stories, and another has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He now lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and their rescue dogs.

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