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In a grand choral fresco, the novel tells the story of a Sicilian farmhand, Salvatore, known as Ture, the eldest son of the Di Nardo family. Although his father, who had already experienced the tragedy of the Karst during the First World War, tried to save his son from this ominous prospect with various pressures and expedients, Ture could not avoid military service and be called up for war.

The fate reserved the worst of destinations for him: the Russian steppe.

Accustomed to sacrifices, to harsh winter in the mountains, shaped by the hard life in the fields, he managed to survive the rigours of a campaign, living in prohibitive conditions. And to return to his beloved land, not without further risks and adventures, knitting back the threads of affection that the war had threatened to interrupt forever.

Taken from the treasure chest of memory, in the frame of a historical novel that edits and enriches but does not alter the truth – if anything, in some cases, it transcends it – the story of the main character Ture Di Nardo becomes exemplary of the condition of many farmers. They often are the only support for their families but are torn away from their work and affections. They are thrown into a sort of no man’s land, the battlefield, dominated by anonymous and mass death, at the mercy of a war that brutalises and, in some ways, depersonalises them.