The rock, the ground, the snow: three elements that make up the mountains. A stairs to the sky, where water, and so life, births, but also a place where people fight to rise up.
And that was what we could see during the Great War in the Alps, when “white devils” from one part of the front and from the other fought through the clouds on the mountain tops, being buried in the ground.
But the same land can also bring life to people, and especially to mountain women as the young lady Agata Primus, who, abandoned from brothers and friends, tries to share a little bit of her life to the poor Italian soldiers in the snow (bringing them food, munitions and hope).
To do this, she isn’t worried about climbing mountains every day, about the weight she has to take with her and the shoots which can kill her.
But another shot, a look, has changed her life: the meeting with a foreign “white devil”.
An incredible and exciting story, rallied in the book “Fiore di roccia” (that is to say “edelweiss” in Italian), an historical novel which cements the successful career of the young Friulan writer Ilaria Tuti, born in Gemona del Friuli in 1976 and she still live there, a well-known voice of her land.
And this book, published on 8 June 2020, is exactly a voice in memory of women and Carnian’s bearers: who has brought in their panniers the past, the present and the future generations.
The right image for a fantastic novel, that gets carry away the reader (and this was also my case) to the rocks, to the valley, to the arms, to the legs, to the mind and to the heart of Agata.
Stefano Pellegrini, 20/01/2022
Caffè Conviviale 