The Watchman of Passo Pordoi
A Novel of the White War

About this book:

High in the Dolomites, where the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies have turned limestone peaks into frozen fortresses, Anton Trenker tends the refuge at Passo Pordoi. He bakes bread for Kaiserjäger, smuggles flour past weevils and officers alike, and pretends not to hear the picks chipping away beneath the Col di Lana—where entire mountains are being hollowed out for a single, catastrophic explosion. Then a childhood friend arrives with a ledger of deeds and birthrights from the valley now under Italian fire, and Anton realizes the war isn't just consuming men. It's coming to erase the proof that his people ever existed.

Caught between a captain who would blast the road to save the line and miners who tunnel in silence beneath the glacier, Anton becomes the unwilling keeper of a valley's memory. In a world where borders shift with each artillery barrage and identity papers burn in field hospitals, a handful of walnut-ink records may be the only thing that survives the coming avalanche.

*The Watchman of Passo Pordoi* is a masterpiece of the White War—where the enemy isn't across the wire, but inside the mountain itself, and the quietest man on the pass holds the loudest secret.