WPLN News Archive; Frances Mayes Bella Tuscany (Rebecca) 5 25 99; News Archive 5/12/99-6/4/99

when you're browsing in the easy chair thinking about a wonderful faraway places have you ever had this particular day dream this case ms homes francis mayes is one of the few people who make their daydreams or reality nine years ago she bought an abandoned farmhouse in court on a small town in the tuscany region of italy it was the kind of renovation nightmare optimistically referred to as a handyman special but francis and her companion and fell in love with broader so late as the house was called so they moved in and started to work eventually they created a beautiful home for themselves three years ago francis mayes memoir this experience titled under the tuscan sun hit bookstores and it has seldom

been off the bestseller list since it isn't meant quite a change in the life of this published poet who is now known to hundreds of thousands of readers all over the world eat startling thing about these books reaching a huge audience is that i do feel like it's an audience of friends and that makes it really wonderful to travel around because i start talking to people after they advance and realize i would hear she had defined it does have this sense of going out into the world in a very very different way than anything i've ever experienced before and that has been the big pleasure one question a reader is a vast francis mayes many times is what convinced her to change her life so radically to turn her daydream to reality when i bought thomas so i was really looking to do something i didn't know how to do i felt like i knew how to do my job i knew how to live my life in sentences and i wanted to do something

that i didn't know how to do i was also getting a divorce and i wanted something out in front of me that was as big as my former life had been so i kept thinking about italy are the coach of the movie everything in about what sets to it gorgeously for just one man so there were a lot of factors coming in to play there but it's kind of a midlife thing just wanted a brand new existence a few weeks ago a new memoir by francis mayes hit bookstores in the best seller charts titled bella tuscany it also tells of her life a foreigner so i but with the renovations of the farmhouse nearly complete francis in and have been able to venture out into the italian countryside i wanted to write about venice and sicily as kind of examples of the extremes of italy one way in the north ridge for a growing beautiful that

particular position facing the byzantine east with oliver history going that way in sicily way south an island also awarded culture owned by so many different cultures that left their stamp on every aspect of life there must be a written the two places are just so magnificently different ballots as kenny also focuses on the land around brother so i and the attention the couple are giving their gardens orchards and vineyards we want to continue to give back to the land we want to ensure that it continues to be a beautiful hillside because our houses situated under an etruscan wall and also after the sign above us there's a message she wall seventy days since when we look at our house it's kind of a in a big context of history already so we feel a responsibility to that idea delighted as she is with the enthusiastic reception both books have been given frances mayes does find it ironic that brought us ally has become such a

landmark it's odd that out of all the houses in tuscany that this particular house has become well known it's a beautiful house but its not one of those noble old fourteenth century farmhouses it's only two hundred and thirty years old which is maybe they're an apex is your house is new he says frances mayes whose new memoir about her life in italy is titled bella tuscany for national public radio i'm rebecca bain says cases of this and homes