In 1939, an idyllic mountain village in South Tyrol, Italy, faces its toughest challenge as Mussolini's fascist government gives German-speaking residents a choice between immigrating to Germany and remaining in Italy as second-class citizens. Teacher Trina, along with her husband Erich, chooses her village and home. When the fascists ban her from working, she continues to teach children secretly in basements and barns. And when the government decides to build a reservoir that will flood homes and fields, Trina resists it with everything she has. A warm and intense novel that not only presents us with the history of a small community in front of a major catastrophe, but also brilliantly depicts the personality of an ordinary woman who courageously and steadfastly resisted the forces of evil that controlled the fate of the world.