On Persephone's Island

A year in the life of glorious Sicily: its seasons and its sacred festivals, its almonds and oranges and demanding family life, its casual assassinations and village feasts, its weather and its people. The American Mary Taylor Simeti arrived on the island after college to work as a volunteer on Danilo Dolci's remarkable social welfare programme, but went on to marry and make her life here. On Persephone's Island chronicles a life divided between an apartment in the city of Palermo and weekends and the summer devoted to sustaining life on an old family farm. It is written by a fascinated outsider, but with the intimacy of an insider: wife to a Sicilian, mother to two Sicilian teenagers, gardener, cook and carer for a suspicious mother-in-law.