HOMESTEAD
- ISBN-10
- 1883285143
- ISBN-13
- 9781883285142
- Series
- Homestead
- Pages
- 210
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1998
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Author
- Rosina Lippi
Description
High in the Austrian alps, ringed by the Three Sisters and the majestic Praying Hands, lies the tiny village of Rosenau, a scattering of dairy farms so isolated that the arrival of a postcard from the outside world is an event to set everyone talking. Against this simple backdrop, Rosina Lippi unfolds the grand passions that animate the human heart. The novel opens in 1909 with Anna of Bengat homestead and her love for rough, beautiful Peter, her husband, and for their children, and for her dead sister's boys, feeble-minded Stante and crippled Michel. As the years pass, the story unfolds through the eyes of the women of Anna's family and the interconnected families of Bent Elbow homestead and the Wainwright's clan: Bent Elbow's Johanna, finding sudden, late love in the summer of 1916 with the Italian deserter Francesco; Isabella, Peter's mother, who cannot bring herself to look at his ravaged face when he comes home from the Great War; Wainwright's Katharina, half-sister to Stante and Michel, carelessly betraying them to the Nazis for a ride in a Daimler; Anna's Olga, who grows up to marry Goat-Cheese Willi's Klaus and lose him and her four brothers in the maw of the Second World War. As we read, each chapter adds layers of meaning from a different character's point of view, and the life of Rosenau gathers force and complexity, like a living thing.
