_To Find a Mountain_
by Dani Amore
read by Laural Merlington
Since her mother's death, Benedetta Carlessimo has tried hard to do a
woman's share of the work on her family's farm. She was sixteen,
however, before she found herself pushed to her limits. Until that
time the war was something that had little enough impact on their rural
community, but now the Germans, who had been allies to Mussolini, were
occupying the land in their region, seeking to keep the Americans from
advancing north through the local mountains to Rome. Suddenly the
Carlessimo home has been chosen to billet the Nazi officers assigned to
this point in the German line along with a changing number of their
men, while the next largest home has been commandeered for a field
hospital. Most of the men disappeared into the mountains as soon as
the Nazis were sighted, but Benedetta's father was not so lucky as the
rest, first kept busy relaying Nazi orders to the people of the village
and then drafted to recovering bodies from the battlefields in the
mountain passes. Every day reports on how those Italians forced to
such duties have been killed, and at last the word comes that the truck
her father was forced to drive exploded, and shreds of his shirt
amongst the mangled bodies indicate he, too, is now gone. Or, did he
manage engineer the explosion so he too could find a mountain on which
to hide?
Hope and despair mingle for her, along with a most unexpected growing
love! But will she now survive when two of the worst of the Germans
apparently intend to punish her for all of those who have managed to
hide from them and for the failure of their forces to keep the
Americans south of their lines? After all, Colonel Wolfe had warned
her father that ten Italians would be slain in retribution for every
German killed by the locals, and they are blaming Benedetta for
Schlemmer's disappearance....
A decent book, although it has a few problems with continuity. In one
case Wolfe has Benedetta struggle to help him get his boots off, but
then she hears the tread of his boots as he limps off to bed. And just
which of the three Carlessimo children sleep in each of the two beds in
the room Benedetta shares with her little sister and brother?
I enjoyed it, and it gives a decent enough picture of the problems and
terrors known during the Nazi occupation. She could have done with
better editing, however.
Bonnie L. Sherrell
Teacher at Large
"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise
cannot see all ends." LOTR
"Don't go where I can't follow."
