Set in the Veneto in Northern Italy and spanning nearly three decades following the First World War, The Madonna of the Mountains is a fierce, sharply observed and richly detailed account of a woman's fight to keep her family alive and thriving – at whatever cost. We meet Maria in1923 as she awaits the arrival of her husband, chosen for her by her father and miraculously neither disfigured nor damaged by the previous war. Together they start a shop and build a business and a family, but the creep of fascism casts a dark shadow and the horrors of war – political and practical – threaten their very survival. The Madonna of the Mountains is about what unites families and communities and also what destroys them. It is about love and enmity, envy and generosity, two men, one God (and his mother) and the undying bond of a mother to her children.