Frances hopes that the villa will be ready for them by Christmas so they can spend the holiday there with her daughter, Ashley.The 1996 book “Under the Tuscan Sun” turned a region of Italy into a shorthand for a certain kind of bourgeois luxury and good taste. The required permits have finally been approved, and the real work on their villa can begin. To their relief, a well has been dug providing a source of fresh water for their new home. As summer ends, renovations are just beginning, and it’s time for Frances and Ed to go back to America to resume their jobs. One hired contractor gets sick and bows out of the project when Frances and Ed hire a replacement, he fails to show up as scheduled. They find local contractors have a more lackadaisical approach to work than they expected. They encounter many issues with the language barrier their Italian is not perfect and their vocabularies not extensive. They also meet a group of Polish workers willing to help them, men who also become their friends along the way. She and Ed hire a local man to repair a stonewall that has collapsed. Weeds grow in and around the home’s terraces, and Frances sets to work clearing them out. Now that they own the house, they must apply for and be granted permits before they can move forward with the bulk of their renovation plans. Once she and Ed are allowed to move in, they begin the arduous process of cleaning the house. The purchase is a lengthy process, but when it’s complete, she is excited, ready to start renovating and making the place into a home once more. Frances is nervous about the purchase because she knows she and Ed will be putting all their savings into it. The house they buy is called Bramasole, which Frances explains means “yearning for the sun.” Though the villa is so old, its price is not cheap.

They grew tired of renting homes for their travels and decided to buy a vacation home of their own. She fell in love with the area on frequent visits with her boyfriend, Ed, whom she met after divorcing her first husband. She is in the process of buying an abandoned villa in Cortona in the Tuscany region of Italy, and she has to make sure her transfer of funds has gone through. The book begins with Frances waiting for news from her bank. She has published several volumes of poetry, a novel, and served as the editor of Best American Travel Writing 2002. Mayes served as the department head of San Francisco University’s creative writing department and is now a full-time writer. The book is part memoir, part travelogue, part cookbook: it’s filled with Mayes’s own Italian recipes, gardening advice, and musings on the Tuscany region of Italy, as well as her ongoing renovation of the villa. Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy (1996) is a nonfiction book about author Frances Mayes’s efforts to renovate an abandoned villa in Cortona, Italy, alongside her husband.

Frances mayes books