Wandering Wildly
Since we are still on holiday this week in Amalfi, today I am hoping to entice you to purchase and read my newest book, Wide, Wild, Everywhere. I have been delighted by the praise I have received from those who have read it, and it is my fondest hope that it resonates with many more of my readers.
As a treat, I have included an excerpt from the story that is set in Amalfi. Enjoy.
" The next few days she spent reconnecting with Amalfi. It wasn’t tourist season, and so it was quieter. She felt that she was finally alone with her old lover, finally able to have a moment with him away from the prying eyes of the masses. And what did she see? She saw through her new eyes what the place meant to everyone. Until you have been away from Amalfi, she realized, you could never know its beauty. Not really. It captivated, it held you in its thrall. The sultry beauty of this coast was unlike any other place in any other country she had been in. It was remote, yet alive, simple yet filled with complexities and layers. Life was slower but more vibrant, and the moments here could hold the depth of the ocean. She wandered around the fontana in the Piazza dei Dogi, and she ducked into the bakery on the side of the piazza. She had been coming to this bakery all of her life. She had come with her grandfather twice a week, and he would tell her that he had come to the bakery with his grandfather. There had been a continuity. A feeling of tradition. The bread was the best bread in town. Many of the restaurants served it to the tourists, but the visitors didn't know that this bakery had been in operation for hundreds of years. That it had kept making bread throughout both wars, that father had handed down the business to son, generation after generation. They didn’t know these things. But they still loved Amalfi. And now, she knew she loved it too. She knew its secrets and she was part of them.
All through her travels, her triumphs, her failures, all through her doubts and need for release, it had been here. The symbol of her life, and of her family, and her place in the world. Amalfi may have felt like a gilded cage, but now instead of feeling trapped or stifled she felt comfort. It was a cage for which she held the key. It was a cage to fly from and then back into. To shut herself in or out of at will. She knew she would leave again, but she also knew that she would always come back. That this was her perfect launching pad to lands unknown."
-From "Amalfi", in Wide, Wild Everywhere. Narrow Publishing, 2014
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