How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Elizabeth Noel's website.
The edelweiss is the quintessential symbol of the Austrian Alps. The flower has been protected under environmental laws since 1886 and features on the nation’s 2-Euro-Cent coin. It might bring forth images of Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp singing a love letter to his homeland in the classic 1965 adaption of The Sound of Music. Edelweiss, Edelweiss, every morning you greet me…
Austria’s Alps live and breathe in Beneath the Edelweiss so pointing to place in the title felt intuitive. However, the edelweiss denotes more than Austria alone. The flower is an illusion, appearing as a star against craggy limestone cliffs, you must look closely to see the tiny yellow flowers nestled inside what are fuzzy white leaves. Able to withstand freezing alpine winters, gale-force winds and thin soil, the edelweiss is a symbol for not only weathering the storm but knowing how to thrive once the clouds have passed. With its rugged alpine beauty, it clings to life against all odds.
The novel’s exact setting is Carinthia, Austria’s southern border province where history is as rich as it is heartbreaking. Beauty in Carinthia is omnipresent, and the dead are thought to mourn the landscape from heaven. Beneath the Edelweiss details Carinthia’s centuries old alpine herbalism tradition alongside it’s cradling of Nazism for it was in the region’s fertile soils that Austrian Nazism permeated.
Other strong...[read on]
Q&A with Elizabeth Noel.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
