Animals of the Alpine Front
This novel unfolds mainly through the characters of Teresa, a young Italian girl who leaves her village to work as a domestic servant in a much larger town called Trento. Carlo, a young American teen, had recently moved with his father to Trento when WWI broke out, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire wanted control of the northern section of Italy, where Teresa and Carlo live.
They meet briefly, but Carlo is conscripted into the Austrian army, and Teresa stays behind in the villa where she has been employed, even though the villa’s family has fled to safer realms. No sooner has the family left than Austrian soldiers arrive and commandeer the villa for their quarters.
The plot continues as the brutality of war is depicted in gripping detail, and the reader follows the characters as they seek courage amid the atrocities of war. Teresa and Carlo’s fate will bring them back together, but both of them have undergone a profound transformation.
The plot takes an unusual twist when Leonard Hawksley, a British man whose goal in life is to save mistreated animals, is introduced. Because horses and mules were savagely neglected in WWI, Zancanella introduces Hawksley as an authentic secondary character, and his interaction with Teresa brings the novel to a bittersweet conclusion. This novel was well-researched and written with evocative language to draw the reader into the plot. It is a compelling tale of man vs. man when ordinary people are thrust into the drama and chaos of war.
