Very typical war time romance story wrapped around small Italian town during WWII.
Wouldn't recommend it except to those who like sappy love stories with predictable happy endings. ( )

A Fictional Look at Rural Italy During WWII

(Full disclosure: I received a free book for review through Goodreads’ First Reads program. Also, trigger warning for rape.)

My children know very little of what happened to me during that time. The parts I have told them are the truth, but I have not told them everything. […]

They do not know how close to death I came. They do not know how close to death their father came. They do now know how close to death my entire village came – all because of the events that took place in my house the year the Germans arrived.

My children will learn that wars are fought not just on the front lines, but also in the dirt streets of poverty-stricken towns like Casalvieri, Italy.

They will learn that their mother killed a man during the war.

The year is 1943, and Nazi forces have just arrived in the small Italian town of Casalvieri. Located several miles north of Mt. Cassino - the single highest point in central Italy - Casalvieri is, much to its residents’ detriment, a strategic asset in the war for Italy. Seemingly overnight, the town is overrun with Germanesi, demanding food, housing, and – worst of all – male bodies to sacrifice to the German war machine.

Unofficial town leader Alfredo Carlesimo has the dubious luck of living in a (relatively) spacious house positioned on the highest hill in the village – thus providing a convenient view of the Cassino valley below. It’s in the Carlesimo family’s home that Colonel Wolff and Lieutenant Becher decide to establish their command center. While they initially grant the widowed father of three a reprieve from serving on the front lines in order to drum up support amongst the villagers, once his usefulness wanes, he’s sent into battle just like all the other Casalvieri men – or at least those who remain. Faced with death on a constant basis, Alfredo must decide whether to stay and fight, or flee to the mountains with the other able-bodied men of fighting age.

When Alfredo disappears – seemingly killed in an explosion – it’s up to his oldest daughter Benedetta (“Benny”) to care for her younger siblings, Iole and Emidio, as well as keep the household running – and the German soldiers, satisfied. As the war drags on and the Americans threaten to overtake Italy, the Germanesi grow increasingly desperate and, in some cases, driven mad by the trauma of warfare. Can Benny keep the whereabouts of her father secret, even as her blossoming relationship with a handsome young Italian man threatens to be her undoing?

While To Find a Mountain sounds like it should be a sweeping saga, it’s actually a rather sparse story. The entirety of the action takes place over a two- to three-year period, with a large gap between parts one and two. It’s an interesting and engaging story, but is at times curiously lacking in emotion, particularly for a wartime romance. There’s not nearly as much violence as you might expect – most of it comes later in the story, after the town has been occupied for a year plus.

In particular, I expected that sexual violence would be an epidemic – after all, most of the men have fled, leaving the town’s women and children alone with their Nazi occupiers – but we only see/hear of three instances of rape, rape attempts, or rape threats. These scenes are horrific, to be sure, and come with a huge trigger warning – but overall it seems almost sanitized, given the circumstances.

Additionally, the story feels far removed from the violence and genocide of World War II (similar to some criticisms of the film adaptation of The Book Thief). Jews are only mentioned once, I believe; and even then it’s not in a particularly sympathetic manner. Perhaps this is historically accurate – to the residents of Casalvieri, who were already struggling to survive food shortages and attendant poverty before the Germans arrived, worrying about the well-being of those outside of their community (let alone country) might have seemed a luxury they could ill afford. Or maybe not. Either way, it was a curious feeling – a World War II story almost entirely devoid of Jewish characters or concerns.

Last but not least, the central romance of the story – that between Benny and Dom – suffers from a case of insta love; its prevalence in YA fiction (along with the ubiquitous love triangle) has left me with very little patience for the stuff. Even so, it’s a little more forgivable here: coming of age in an isolated, rural village, it doesn’t take a vivid imagination to see how Benny might fall for the first handsome stranger to look her way.

3.5 stars, rounded down to 3 stars where necessary. While To Find a Mountain does have its weaknesses, I saw in Benny a captivating (if unlikely) heroine. The town itself also proved a compelling character, and it was interesting to see how the residents dealt with food shortages and scarcity during wartime occupation.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2014/12/08/to-find-a-mountain-by-dani-amore/ ( )