Excerpt from The Last Man Standing by Davide Longo, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"How old would you say he is?"

"Ten days," Ottavio said, after a cursory examination. "Maybe crossed with something useful for herding cows. Do you want to keep him?"

Leonardo looked at the dog, who seemed to be struggling to open his eyes.

"I think I do. Can you sell me any milk?"

Ottavio stared, his face red and sweat in the hair around his ears. "Have you come here on purpose to annoy me?"

"How do you mean?"

They went into the cowshed past the immobile haunches of some twenty cows, about ten animals on each side, then passing through a metal door found themselves in a room tiled to the ceiling, in which a fan was stirring air charged with disinfectant. Ottavio took offhis outdoor shoes and Leonardo did the same, placing his sandals in a small wardrobe. Both put on colored clog-like rubber shoes. There were two large zinc vats in the room, and shelves with cheeses of various sizes. Ottavio uncovered one of the vats. It was full of a yellowish liquid with what looked like thin metallic plates floating on the surface, and it smelled like shoemaker's glue.

"What's this?" Leonardo said.

"This morning's milk."

Leonardo stepped back from the overpowering smell. Ottavio closed the vat and went to a window facing the back of the farm, which Leonardo knew to be where he kept his heifers and orchard. Ottavio parked his elbows on the windowsill and contemplated his property.

"Do you hear the planes going over at night?"

"Sometimes," Leonardo said. In fact, being a heavy sleeper, he had heard nothing at all. It had always been like that. Once he slept for five hours in an armchair at the Lisbon airport, missing all the flights that could have taken him home. Returning to his hotel he had gotten in touch with Alessandra, who had no difficulty in believing him, and then he went to bed to watch a bit of television but without being able to keep his eyes open to the end of the film.

"When the planes go over, the cows play this trick on me. A few months ago it was only now and then, but now for a whole week I've had to throw away all the milk. The big producers add powdered milk, but I don't want that on my conscience. I don't even give this stuff to the pigs."

Seen from behind, Ottavio was a short, stocky figure with no sharp edges; veins bulging on his arms even when he was not lifting anything heavy. He was five years older than Leonardo but looked five years younger.

"Can you trust a married man?" Ottavio said.

Leonardo said yes and thought of Elio. Ottavio nodded.

"Then just ask him about women's periods. My daughter hasn't had one for two months but can't be pregnant. And my wife, who hadn't had a period for years, has started getting them again."

Leonardo looked at the ascetic white of the tiles. Someone was singing a song somewhere accompanied by the regular beat of something like an old pedal sewing machine.

"I think," Ottavio said, pausing to add emphasis to what he was about to say, "that those planes are dropping something; something to calm us all down, because if not we're all going to go mad."

They went out into the yard where a light wind from the mountains stirred scraps of straw and blew hair about. The two dogs watched them closely from under a bench by the wall. As he mounted his bicycle, Leonardo could feel the puppy's hot urine running down his chest to his trouser belt. He pretended it was nothing.

"They've seen those two in the woods again," Ottavio said, "and they've also found a fire and the bones of a goat."

Leonardo swept his hair back from his brow.

"Must be campers," he smiled.

But Ottavio fixed Leonardo's pale greenish eyes.

"It's not the time for that kind of crap, Leonardo, can't you see how the wind's blowing?"

Excerpted from The Last Man Standing by Davide Longo. Copyright © 2013 by Davide Longo. Excerpted by permission of Quercus. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.