The Saltbox Olive by Angela Antle

Through the as-yet-untold story of Newfoundland soldiers in Italy during the Second World War, The Saltbox Olive is an evocative tale of the complex interactions between past and present, told through one woman’s search for the truth of her family’s mysterious past.

Caroline Fisher sets out to solve the mystery of why her grandfather burned his brother Arch’s wartime letters. The Saltbox Olive follows the wartime route of Arch, Tombstone, Slade, and Garl, members of the 166th British Army (Newfoundland) Artillery Regiment. After surviving the battles of the Sangro and Cassino, they are all but forgotten by British HQ in the mountains between Florence and Bologna, where war loses all semblance of logic, where their loyalties are tested, and where they encounter acts of brutality, revenge, and loneliness. Weaving their stories with those of Caroline and Min Fisher, war photographer Barbara Kerr, and partisan Lucia Capponi and her son Cosimo, The Saltbox Olive explores the role of individual responsibility in wartime, how photography influences our understanding of truth, and how sins committed in times of duress as well as declarations of love can ripple outward for generations. The Saltbox Olive is about the connections of the past to the present and the conflict between the simple truths we desperately crave, and life’s complex realities.