Send Me Safe My Somebody

Praise for A Tuscan Trilogy

The Cielo: A Novel of Wartime Tuscany. ?A moving debut novel of a luscious country.?
? Jacqueline Mitchard, best-selling author of The Deep End of the Ocean

Sparrow?s Revenge: A Novel of Postwar Tuscany. ?I enthusiastically recommend Sparrow?s Revenge to anyone with the slightest interest in history, Italy or human nature ? in short, to everyone.?
? BookReview.com

Dino?s Story: A Novel of 1960s Tuscany. ?Salsini?s research once again is impeccable and serves well to anchor this young man?s story to an unforgettable place and time in Italian history.?
? Fred Gardaphe, distinguished professor English and Italian American Studies at Queens College and associate editor of Fra Noi.

A decade after Dino?s Story, the beloved characters of the first three novels return in this engrossing collection, all set in Florence and the beautiful hills of Tuscany. Father Lorenzo, still exhausted from the flood, is tempted by a beautiful woman. Tomasso seeks his long-lost son. Father Sangretto retaliates when a rival priest produces a ?miracle.? Donna and Ezio open their farmhouse to tourists and an eccentric author is their first visitor. The women of Sant?Antonio join to help the stricken Annabella. Anna leaves the convent. Dino makes up his mind between Sophia and Francesca. And more.

The family cook, Emilia, a feisty, temperamental woman from a nearby fishing village, dutifully produces bland white dishes for every family meal, as dictated by Patrizia's grandfather. But behind the kitchen door it's a different story. One day seven-year-old Patrizia is led by a wonderful smell into the kitchen, where Emilia is preparing a spicy red sauce bursting with garlic and onion. With one bite, Patrizia becomes hooked. In the spacious, sun-drenched kitchen and adjoining herb garden, Emilia takes Patrizia under her wing, disclosing the secrets of her favorite Tuscan dishes.

Does one honor one’s country or one’s heart? Malka Marom explores this classic dilemma in her stunningly powerful first novel, an extraordinary tale of people caught up in a violent and seemingly endless historical conflict, compelled by love and grief to transcend it.

Sulha tells the story of Leora, who, twenty years after her husband was killed in the Sinai War, is empowered by law to decide whether or not to allow her only son to serve high-risk duty as his father did. As Abraham was so severely tested, so is Leora with her son’s fate in her hands. Charged with this burden, Leora leaves her uneasy exile in Toronto and ventures to Sinai.

In the remote and treacherous mountain region of Sinai, Leora encounters a Bedouin clan, which offers her a glimpse of the other: the mysterious Arab world that so fascinated her as a child, the enemy that her son might face. And, indeed, mounting danger and mystery pervade the air of the Bedouin compound. But are these people really the enemy? Is sulha — forgiveness, reconciliation, peace — not possible here? The modern Israel to which Leora then travels offers no clear answers and a deep enmity towards her. To her former compatriots, she is the other — outsider, exile, even a deserter from the land to which her husband gave his life to defend.

Sulha is the story of one woman’s search for the answer to her son’s future, and through it the reconciliation of her own fragmented past. In the process, it explores the interlocking and sometimes irreconcilable boundaries of love and loyalty — to a person, a people, a land.

This updated ebook edition of Sulha has been enhanced with an extensively annotated appendix of photographs taken by the author while she lived and roamed the desert with the Bedouins, as well as a series of questions designed as conversation starters for book clubs.

The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano -- the future dictator of Paraguay -- begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and ahorse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream -- one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay.
With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.