Based in 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.

When Caroline Fisher studied art in Florence in the mid-1990s, trying unsuccessfully to finagle a way to live there for the rest of her days, she was unaware of her family’s history in Italy—how her grandfather had travelled the same streets and railway lines she did, or how her great-uncle Arch lay buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in those mountains. And how could she, when her grandfather burned his brother’s letters after returning home from the war? When an olive tree arrives at Caroline’s front door, family secrets begin to unravel, sending her back to Italy to find answers.

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. Left on their own in the mountains between Florence and Bologna, where war loses all semblance of logic, where their loyalties are tested, they encounter acts of brutality, revenge, and loneliness. As their stories weave into those of Caroline and others, she faces the truth of individual responsibility in wartime, and how both sins committed in times of duress as well as declarations of love can ripple outward for generations. The Saltbox Olive traces the connections of the past to the present and the conflict between the simple truths we desperately crave and life’s complex realities.