The novel is set in Friuli in 1944 and deals with an event that actually occurred.
In that year, the Germans relocated an army of Cossacks to Friuli, who had sided with Hitler under the illusion that they could defeat the Bolsheviks, their historic enemies.
They were a people who had wandered across Europe with women and children in search of a land, spurred by the promise of a victorious return to their places of origin, amid the great rivers of European Russia.
The narrative revolves around the figure of a woman, Marta.
She arrived in the village with her fiancé and his sister, Anita.
Yet she is soon left alone, as her fiancé is dispatched to the Russian border and never returns.
Marta lives with a wealthy Jewish widow of Slavic descent, who had fled Russia following anti-Semitic persecutions and sought refuge in a remote village in Friuli.
Life unfolds in an apparent serenity, which is shattered by a German raid that sweeps away the Jewish woman and, along with her, a group of Gypsies who were camping with their caravan near the village.
Marta is left alone with Anita, who is expecting a child, and an old Gypsy who by chance had escaped.
Marta is a strong woman who always looks to the future, confronting adversity with great courage.
A young man arrives from the Russian front, Ivos, with whom she has a brief relationship, soon cut short by his decision to join the partisans.
Alone in a large villa, Marta, Anita, and the old Gypsy live in a state of suspension, of waiting, striving to lead a normal life amidst an increasingly precarious and dramatic situation.
At this point, the Cossacks arrive, overturning village life both materially (first looting, then installing themselves in the houses) and socially, introducing their own customs and forging ties with the locals.
In truth, the Friulians seem to accept the arrival of the invaders, not least because they feel united with them by the longing for land and for a definitive resolution to centuries-old suffering.
A family comes to live in Marta’s house (a woman, a youth, and a twelve-year-old boy), alongside the two commanders of the Cossack detachment: Gavrila and Urvan.
With the latter, Marta embarks on a romantic relationship which, in her mind, might culminate in an escape to America to build a life together.
In this section of the novel, the tone is light yet melancholy: the Cossacks are capable of both enjoying themselves and entertaining others, but they carry a profound longing for their native land, their customs, and their traditions.

In Urvan’s soul, deep, deep within, the ghosts of those archaic customs still wandered, like a faded, bleached memory whose roots lay in times worn away and undone for centuries.
He had the sensation of having landed who knows where, and of being awaited behind the wall by dark, unpredictable events

.
Both the Cossacks and the local people delude themselves into believing they can continue living

inside the house, a place set apart from the world, like an unmoored ship gliding across a sea devoid of change and storms

At a certain point, the situation unravels.
The embattled peace between Cossacks and partisans turns into open warfare.
A sequence of bloody, gratuitously cruel episodes begins.
In truth, there is no reason to fight, yet it is as if the fragile bond of coexistence between the two peoples had shattered.
The Cossacks, who until then had respected the women and local customs, begin committing acts of violence and murder without even knowing why; it is as though the hope of a safe haven, of a homeland, had vanished.

But above all, it was the mental homeland that had vanished, that order of thought through which a man always felt, within them, to be in a familiar and reassuring place

.
At a certain point, the Cossacks decide to march again and return to their homeland.
It will be a tragic exodus, as many will perish from hardship and disease, others in clashes with the partisans, while the last among them will commit collective suicide to avoid being repatriated to Russia, where certain death awaits them.

Marta is left alone once more, yet the novel moves toward a natural conclusion, for the world must go on.
Anita’s child is born, and Marta is reunited with Ivos and resolves to live with him: true happiness may remain elusive, but with courage, the struggle to survive will begin anew.

The novel develops along two themes: one social and collective, the other more intimate and familial.
The social theme, which renders this novel so timely, concerns the encounter between two peoples, framed, however, within the notion that we are forever shipwrecked:

humanity had reached a point where, increasingly, there would be entire populations without a homeland, nomads driven from their lands, crucified by painful circumstances offering no way out, propelled forward by armies and wars

.
Faced with this resurgence of barbarism, the author finds no socio-political solution, seeking it instead in the strength of intimate and familial bonds, and above all in womanhood.
Marta embodies the mother-earth, the figure capable of fostering coexistence.

She was a simple, even elementary woman, who around her, as always, could see nothing but men, only men, all resembling one another, speaking different languages, harboring different thoughts, yet all battered by war and misfortune, all lost in the disorder and darkness of the world

The narrative pace is slow, at times excessively so, yet it is the writing that sustains the reading.
One is captivated and enthralled by a calm, expansive prose that manages to draw a sort of mist, a veil over the cruelty of destiny: after all, that is what the characters themselves desire.
As the author stated,

I like to view things from afar, to describe events as though they were already history or legend

Why read it? The story is compelling, the book is exquisitely written, and above all, it is a timely novel that speaks of the encounter between two peoples and the inexorable power of our shared belonging to the human race.

The Army of the Lost Rivers