Book Three of the Prayers in the Air series by Dennis Santaniello. Winter, 1917. A South Tyrolean village keeps changing hands. Ten-year-old Fernando changes with it—Fernando when the Italians hold the square, Ferdinand when the Austrians take it back. His father times the flag changes. Forty-three seconds. Thirty-eight. Twenty-eight. The café survives by serving both sides. But the regulars are disappearing. The flag changes are getting faster. And Fernando is starting to forget which version of himself is real. Then an American walks in. And this time even switching sides won't be enough to save them. Cardinal in the Snow is a tense historical novel about identity and survival. It continues Prayers in the Air and reads well on its own.