Italy near Cassino in the terrible winter of 1944. An icy rain continuing unabated for days. Guided by a seventy-year-old Italian man in rope-soled shoes three American soldiers are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a steep hill that they discover before very long to be a mountain. As they climb the old man's indeterminate loyalties only add to the terror and confusion that engulf them. Peace is a feat of storytelling from one of America's most acclaimed novelists: a powerful look at the corrosiveness of violence the human cost of war and the redemptive power of mercy. From the Trade Paperback edition.
