[Last House] is beautiful and heartbreaking, and readers will fall in love with Maria. It's also a profound meditation on the stories we tell about ourselves, the stories others tell about us, how those stories are handed down the generations, and the effect of inherited narratives and memories on our lives. I absolutely loved it

Monica Ali, Sunday Times Bestselling author of Love Marriage

A poignant, captivating, beautifully woven family saga. As honest as Elena Ferrante, with the folkloric intensity of Téa Obreht, Last House Before the Mountain explores the ways we reconstruct our family histories in an attempt to understand who we are

Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of The Exiles, A Piece of the World, and Orphan Train

Helfer brings a great deal of nuance to her exploration of female desire and vulnerability, male power, and community division.

Publishers Weekly

This is a novel about what's hidden and what happens when it is revealed ... What distinguishes Last House Before the Mountain from a hundred other family stories is its charm

Observer

Last House Before the Mountain by Monika Helfer is a masterclass in literary compression. In just 125 pages, Helfer brings a whole world of wonder, loss and deep, deep longing to indelible life

Laird Hunt, author of Zorrie

Monika Helfer powerfully transfigures the lives of a family who exist physically and emotionally at the edge of their society, as the flames of war reshape their shadowed world forever

David Park, author of Spies in Canaan