[Into Their Labours 02] • Once in Europa · Book Two of the Into Their Labours Trilogy (Vintage International)

A luminous collection of interwoven stories, Once in Europa is a portrait of two worlds−a small Alpine village bound to the earth and by tradition, and the restless, future-driven culture that will invade it−at their moment of collision. The instrument of entrapment is love: the passion of a willful shepherd for a shrewd bourgeois housewife; of a vital young woman for a dashing Russian who has come to work in the local factory; of a steadfast son for his aged mother. Lives are lost and hearts are broken, and, always, love is a transcending form of grace. In Once in Europa , it speaks as plainly and as movingly as a remembered language, creating a work of astonishing tenderness.