Under the Tuscan Sun

Write what you don’t know
about what you do.

Friend to Frances Mayes
on
Writing Under The Tuscan Sun

Every year, for as long as anyone can remember, Europeans take their summer holidays during August. Spain, Italy and Majorca are favorite destinations. It’s a good time of year for the rest of the world to vacation elsewhere.

But Italy beckons even when summer crowds are at their worst. Whether one trudges through Rome’s ruins or Pompeii’s villas, the hot sun is a welcome change from the European north. And if scenery is on the agenda, one could not experience a better place than the Amalfi Coast with its wondrous towns of Sorrento, Positano and Ravello.

Visiting such places, Americans wistfully think: “Wouldn’t it be great to live here?” One American, Frances Mayes, did more than wonder. She invested her life’s savings to experience her dream.

She picked an unlikely spot - a town called Cortona - in the region of Italy known as Tuscany.