The Uncounted

About this book

The alp at Trisenna is a high summer pasture reached by one switchback road, worked from June to the first snow, and kept by a senner who milks, makes the cheese, and keeps the tally book, a ledger going back further than anyone has bothered to read. Karin Brunner, thirty four, left the valley at eighteen and did not look back; now her grandfather is dead, the alp is hers, and the sensible thing is to sell the herd to a lowland dairy before winter, take the money, and never climb the road again. Vinz Kessler, who was her grandfather's senner for forty years and will not leave the mountain, meets her at the byre with the tally book open and one instruction, the only thing he asks: count them if she must, but leave one uncounted, and write it as it has always been written, and one.