Elise Valmorbida’s The Madonna of the Mountains is a sweeping historical saga set in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. It’s the story of one woman’s desperate struggle to ensure her family’s survival as the Fascist party comes to power and her country enters the Second World War. It’s a novel I was sure I’d like, but ended up struggling through.

Maria Vittoria is twenty-five in 1923. The other women her age are married with children, but Maria is still single. Her father is determined to find her a husband, and although she’s relatively content with her life the way it is, she knows marriage is what is expected. The beginning of the story finds her nervously awaiting the arrival of the husband her father has found for her.

Achille is a war veteran. His family is pretty poor, but they’re rumored to be good people and they’re not put off by Maria’s advanced age. Her father claims Achille is the best man he could find, and the two are married quickly. Maria is taken with her new husband’s good looks, and she vows to be the very best wife she can be. But life as Achille’s wife isn’t easy. The newly-weds live with Achille’s parents, and Maria is dismayed by the lack of privacy they have. She’s not sure how she’ll ever be able to accustom herself to married life with someone always looking over her shoulder, but she knows better than to complain.

Luckily, Achille is a hard worker, and within four years, he and Maria manage to move out of his parents’ house and into a small house of their own in a nearby village. They have two children by this time, and Maria begins to hope life will begin to resemble the stuff of her childhood dreams. Unfortunately, the National Fascist Party comes into power around this time, and life begins to change in some very negative ways for Maria and her family.

There’s a lot more to the story, but I don’t want to spoil things for you. Instead, I’ll just caution you that The Madonna of the Mountains is not a happy story. Ms. Valmorbida doesn’t hold back in her descriptions of life before and during World War II. We aren’t given too many details about the battles fought or the military strategy used to win them. Instead, the author has chosen to show us in painstaking detail what life must have been like for the common people struggling to survive in a war-torn land. As you might imagine, it’s a difficult book to read.

I really wanted to like Maria, but something always seemed to get in my way. The author’s writing is a little stilted at times, and I often found myself feeling quite removed from Maria and her story. I tend to devour historical novels that make me feel transported back in time; I love the feeling of actually inhabiting the story I’m reading, but that didn’t happen for me here. I ended up feeling quite detached and disappointed. The author tells us again and again that Maria is strong and courageous, and while certain events showed this to be true, I often felt like I was being told this more often than I was actually being shown, something for which I don’t have a lot of patience.

I must give the author props for imbuing parts of the story with an almost palpable feeling of desperation, and these were the portions of the novel I enjoyed most. I actually felt connected to Maria, Achille and the children when the stakes were highest for them. I just wish that connection could have been carried over to the rest of the book.

The Madonna of the Mountains isn’t a bad book by any means. It’s just a book that didn’t work particularly well for me. I’m sure other fans of World War II-themed stories will enjoy it far more than I did.

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