In the process of understanding who you are, more often you discover who you are not.1937. Northern Italy. New international conflicts loom on the horizon, and Italy must feed its war machine. Angelo Grimani has a plan to keep the Reschen Valley reservoir out of his father’s hands but he needs a local front to succeed. He faces his past and seeks an alliance with Katharina Steinhauser.They share … with Katharina Steinhauser.
They share a teenage daughter, Angelo discovers. Annamarie. And she is convinced her future lies beyond the confines of the valley. When an Italian delegation arrives to assess the reservoir, Annamarie believes she has found her ticket out…in the form of Angelo’s son and a Fascist uniform.
Love, betrayal, and deception explode in this next instalment of the Reschen Valley. This is the third book in the series and can be picked up as a stand-alone.
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I read Book 1 and Book 2 of this series, and I feel I have learned so much about the human side of what was going on in the aftermath of WWI and Hitler’s rise to power before WWII. One of the storylines lets us know what happens when we keep secrets in our families. I admire Katharina’s strength and Florian’s committment to his family. Angelo’s family mirrors what happens when greed and lust are most important.
I enjoyed reading the book. Can’t wait for the rest of the series. The interactions with the characters is great, even if you don’t agree with what they are spouting. The characters are true life and just like they would have been your neighbors.
new adventures for Annemarie, Katharina daughter. She is 16 years old, goes to Bozen. not all are fine and happy for her there.
in fact some secrets are hidden in Katharina family and cause trouble, fear.
Italy seems have different laws and the life in Graun and Arlund change, but the people have the hope to be back German.
what nice experience reading this books, you can understand the feeling of the people in Reschen Valley, now italian place where all change.
olzano is the third book in Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger’s Reschen Valley historical fiction series. This book although the third in the series is a stand alone novel. It tells the story of Katharina Steinhauser and Angelo Grimani as well as their children Annamarie Steinhauser and Marco Grimani.
The story takes place from 1937 until 1938. It covers history I don’t remembering ever learning or I’ve forgotten. It involves border changes in Italy, Austria and Gemany after WWI and the problems caused for the ethnic people of those countries when they suddenly found themselves living in a different country with different languages and customs.
It’s clear there is previous history between Katharina and Angelo in the previous books but the author has artfully included enough of that history so the reader never feels lost in this storyline. When Angelo and Katharina meet once again they have secrets their teenage children aren’t aware of. Annamarie and Marco then meet by accident and it sets up a series of events that have drastic consequences.
Adding to the storyline is the history of the beginnings of Mussolini and Hitler and their thirst for power and control. In the middle of all the turmoil lies the Reschen Valley and it’s people’s struggle to survive the onslaught of progress which is coming on the form of dams that will steal their farmland and end their way of life.
I really enjoyed this book. The storyline is solid and well written and the characters well developed. Reading and absorbing the history covered in the novel gave me much more insight into why Hitler was allowed to go unchallenged as he invaded countries under the guise of taking back the German homeland. I’m sure politicians at that time believed his claims to be true. Unfortunately their delay in stopping him and recognizing how evil and depraved he was led to the horrors of WWII.
After reading this third book in the series I am now planning to read the first two. I’m curious to find out the previous history of the characters as well as the earlier history of the region.
I recommend reading this book. The characters are likeable even though flawed and the storyline is interesting as well as easy to follow. Maybe you’ll also learn something about that period of history like I did.
I received a free copy of this book and voluntarily reviewed it.
Bolzano: Reschen Valley 3 by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger uses slice of life vignettes to tell the story of troubled characters from a troubled region during a troubled time. As the two main characters, Angelo Grimani and Annamarie Steinhauser are swept along by the drama in their lives, the conflicts between tradition and progress play out on personal and public stages. Personally neither character is content with their lives. Angelo is conflicted by the role he plays as Italian minister engaged in public works and Annamarie is conflicted by the lack of opportunity in her rural life. Publicly the region in which they live, the actual Reschen Valley, is conflicted by allegiance to Italy or to Tyrolean Austria and by the drumbeats, during 1937 and 1938, of the growing fascist power of Mussolini and the rise of Nazi politics under Hitler. Lucyk-Berger uses dramatic irony to draw us into these conflicts because we know more than the characters do about how their personal and public conflicts are likely to play out.
In his personal conflict, Angelo Grimani is torn by the desire to respect the traditional values of the rural Reschen Valley, located in what the Tyroleans call South Tyrol and what the Italians call Alto Adige against the mandate to produce more electrical power by damming the river that runs through the valley. Against the political might of the private electric company run by his father, the Colonel, he seeks a compromise strategy to have several smaller dams that will flood less of the valley, thereby salvaging some of the farming and fishing from which the inhabitants make their living. He is also haunted by past marital infidelities that have created divisions in his family. His son Marco is attracted to the power of his grandfather’s empire and less sympathetic with his father’s desire to preserve some of the Tyrolean traditions, perpetuating the father/son conflicts that run through the story.
Annamarie’s personal conflict is between her love for her family and the beautiful valley in which she lives and her desire to be something more than what is promised by her rural environment. She longs for the excitement of a city and dreams of being a film star. She attaches herself to Marco and runs away to Bolzano to be with him and pursue her dream of becoming an actress.
On the personal level the dramatic irony of the story looms since we suspect early and learn later that Annamarie and Marco are, in fact, half-siblings, the result of a liaison between Angelo and Annamarie’s mother some time ago.
The dramatic irony of the central plot concerning the damming of the valley’s river and the growing threat of war plays against the reality of the local characters’ struggles in the Reschen Valley. The political conflicts become excuses to enact personal animosities of long standing as locals who align themselves with the Italians and those who align with the German League seize on these political alliances as reason for verbal and physical attack. The greatest dramatic irony comes from the readers’ recognition that in another generation, the whole valley will be drowned by the eventual building of a large dam that will flood all of the villages. This latter does not figure in the immediate plot, but our knowledge of the regions brings it into play.
While the disjointed nature of the narrative is sometimes disconcerting, the focus of the story on the conflict of tradition versus progress is timeless. Young people from traditional, rural areas are always drawn to the bright lights and amusements of the city. Adults who are caught up in the rat race and political intrigues of businesses that promise progress always long for the peace and quiet of rural life. Lucyk-Berger vivifies these conflicts in the lives of her characters, principally Angelo Grimani and Annamarie Steinhauser, who reinvents herself in Bolzano as Annamarie Casa de Pietra, fascist young pioneer, and again in Innsbruck as Annamarie Steinhauser, comic actress. The persistent nature of the regional conflicts is obvious from the fact that Bolzano is, to this day, also known as Bozen, reflecting the dual identity and therefore conflicting history of a region whose ethnic Germanic heritage has arbitrarily been ceded to Italy.
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger has written an important story about a region about which many of us know very little. The timeless nature of the conflicts in the personal and public lives of her characters underscores the universality of particular instances. Here the particular instances concern the Twentieth Century demand for electricity which pushes industrialists to profit at the expense of local traditional ways of life. In this particular conflict we have not only tradition versus progress, but ethnic divisions between Tyroleans and Italians and between generations. The tradition versus progress conflict plays out in the Reschen Valley, but could be set in any number of locations in which valleys and towns are drowned by the dams that herald progress.
This book is my fourth book by Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger. The first two in this series, “No Man’s Land” and “The Breach”, along with her book “The Girl From The Mountains”, they were all amazing.
In this third part, it is 1937 and
Katharina Steinhauser and her now teenaged daughter Annamarie, experience so much turmoil and drama. Annmarie has the same free spirit as her mother, which leads her to act on her every wish and desire.
Angelo Grimani is still trying to save the Reschen Valley reservoir.
Angelo goes back to the Reschen Valley with his teenaged son Marco. Annmarie then meets Marco and that’s when the secrets of the past will haunt their future.
In the pages that I turn so quickly to see what unfolds in Balzano with the impending creation of the dams, the uprising of Hitler & Mussolini, and the unbelievable events which takes place within the families of the Grimani and Steinhauser.
Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger writes many memorable words, here are a few I liked:
“He who sleeps in his youth, cries in his old age.”
“Happy families are all alike;every unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way.”
“A seventy-year-old priest in a brawl.”
I was left many of times with a gasped look upon my face for the many unbelievable parts.
In the end we are left in Austria, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the “Two Fatherlands” will reveal and the faiths of the Grimani and Steinhauser families, and the Reschen Valley.
Personal note:
While reading, my father was listening to Carlo Buti, just as it was playing at the Grimani home at their anniversary party. I found this to be very coincidental, but it was nice since it brought me there.
A vibrant piece of historical fiction
After reading No Man’s Land and The Breach, it was unquestionable to me I’d be eager to read part 3 in this enthralling Reschen Valley series. Bolzano made me feel even more rooted in the story of Katharina and her growing family, part 3 having her daughter, Annamarie in the center of it. What a wonderful gift the author possesses: she engages readers in lives of her characters! The tale brings us further in time, closer to the war looming in the immediate future. The story is not only for entertainment, it educates the reader on the history, revealing how the tension before the Second World War was growing in this particular part of Europa. Beautiful, descriptive language makes Bolzano into a smooth read and contains all the ingredients of a good historical fiction. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Read this wonderful series.