'[Last House] is beautiful and heartbreaking, and readers will fall in love with Maria. ... I absolutely loved it'

- MONICA ALI, Sunday Times Bestselling author of Love Marriage

'Helfer brings a whole world of wonder, loss and deep, deep longing to indelible life'

- LAIRD HUNT author of Zorrie, National Book Award Finalist

'Monika Helfer powerfully transfigures the lives of a family who exist physically and emotionally at the edge of their society, as the flames of war reshape their shadowed world forever'

- DAVID PARK, author of Spies in Canaan

For readers of Ian McEwan, Elena Ferrante and Robert Seethaler, a spellbinding, multigenerational family saga set in a fractured rural village in WWI Austria.

Josef and Maria live with their children on the edge of a valley in westernmost Austria, far away from the nearest village, whose residents scorn the family's aura of separateness and ill-repute, though no one can quite pinpoint the source of the grudge. Perhaps the answer lies in Maria’s unseemly beauty, her dark hair and clean white clothes, and in her rugged husband's stern, inscrutable face. Perhaps it’s because they are poor and their land is cheap, right at the foot of the mountains. Perhaps it's their baseless pride; even the children seem godforsaken yet impervious, needing no one outside their tribe.

When the First World War breaks out, Josef is drafted into the army for what he expects to be a short time, reluctantly leaving Maria and the children dependent on the protection of the village's self-aggrandizing, lascivious mayor. While her husband is gone, Maria becomes pregnant with Margarethe (Grete), her fifth child. Born while Josef is still away at war, he will never speak a word to her.

Based on celebrated Austrian novelist Monika Helfer's own family history, and following with breathtaking grace the inherited trauma of four generations, Last House Before the Mountain is a propulsive, haunting, multi-layered saga about memory, family, and the hidden wages of war.