Season's Savings | ₹5/mo for 3 months
₹199/month after first 3 months. Renews automatically. Terms apply.
Beneath the Edelweiss
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to cart failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
₹5/month for first 3 months
Beneath the Edelweiss
Buy Now for ₹568.70
-
Narrated by:
-
Laura Jennings
-
Written by:
-
Elizabeth Noel
From a poetic new voice in historical fiction comes a story of resistance, community, and survival set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Austrian Alps and the heartbreaking onset of World War II.
Growing up on a farm, high among the flowering slopes of Carinthia, Mitzi Hausler has never fit in—not even with her own family. At thirteen, she’s no taller than a six-year-old, and her peers’ taunts of “Witchy Mitzi” follow her everywhere. Thankfully, she has her loyal pup for comfort. And Oma, the grandmother who raised her.
But Oma, a gifted herbalist, won’t be around forever. She vows to pass on her knowledge before it’s too late, sharing her mysterious alpine remedies with Mitzi. With no marriage prospects, herbs may be Mitzi's only path forward. Indeed, when resources grow tight, her resentful older sister sends Mitzi away to Talend to care for a grieving widower and his sickly young child.
In the town, against all odds, Mitzi’s life gradually blooms into something unexpected and she discovers she belongs. But when political violence and Nazi eugenic policies come to town, she’s forced to make a life-altering choice.
© 2026 by Elizabeth Noel. ℗ 2026 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Critic Reviews
“In Beneath the Edelweiss, Elizabeth Noel reminds us that ‘without the previous generation there is no history, and without the next there is no hope.’ Mitzi, a young herbalist raised in the Carinthian Mountains, comes of age during the Nazi occupation of Austria, which brings quiet horrors to the innocent lives in her care and eventually threatens her own life as well. Graceful and spellbinding, Edelweiss is a tale that sinks into the heart. I am already longing for the next installment! —Sumi Hahn, author of The Mermaid from Jeju
“Deeply informed by family lore and careful research, this is a work of remarkable confidence and maturity: Australian historical fiction reaching out into the world, well beyond its accustomed limits. With extraordinary command of detail and character, Noel’s writing feels like something summoned from memory, scratched into bone, rather than merely imagined. Through the indomitable Mitzi, we’re reminded that Europe’s modern convulsions have their antecedents, that families coped and cared for each other as best they could while tyranny threatened.” —Jock Serong, author of Cherrywood