Are we all in the autumn spirit yet? Would you enjoy a novel set in Italy’s holiday season? How about some romance, family, and mystery in a story set on the Italian coast, when sisters inherit a dead poet’s cottage. Only the poet isn’t entirely gone.
It was a lot of fun writing this book during the season of holidays — Halloween, All Saints Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I put all of them into the story, and in my research discovered that the holiday season in Italy is colorful, festive, surprising, and beautiful.
Of course, Halloween is embodied in the novel by visits from the poet’s spirit as he gently haunted the sisters who take over his house in order to get them to stop quarreling. Making a Thanksgiving meal in an Italian village is a challenge, so one of the sisters had fun — and sparked a new romance — trying to shop for that. Want to read a chapter?
My favorite Italian festivity that I captured for the story is Christmas Eve in Tellaro and the Underwater Nativity. This real event celebrates the birth of Jesus by a group of divers raising a statue of the baby Jesus from under the sea. The statue is carried in a candlelit procession and placed in a manger in the church and accompanied by fireworks over the sea.
For more about the Italian holidays, check out this article: Christmas Eve in Liguria.