Saving Madonna by Kate Bristow

 

 

Saving Madonna

by Kate Bristow

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GENRE: Historical Fiction

 

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BLURB: Is a painting worth dying for?

 

Inspired by real events, an unforgettable story of love, courage and sacrifice to save a country’s heritage.

 

Italy 1943. As the Allies bomb Milan, Elena Marchetti reluctantly gives up her coveted job as an art curator in the city to return to her family farm near Urbino. She takes up a new role assisting Pasquale Rotondi, the Superintendent of Arts in the region, in protecting works of art from all over Italy that have been hidden in the relative safety of the countryside.

 

At a family celebration, Elena reunites with Luca, a close childhood friend. A shattering event instigated by the occupying Germans deepens their relationship, and they start planning a life together. When rumors surface that Italy’s art is being stolen by the German occupiers, Pasquale hatches an audacious plan to rescue the priceless paintings in his possession. Elena and Luca are forced to make an impossible decision: will they embark on a dangerous mission to save Italy’s cultural heritage?

 

 

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Excerpt:

 

“I don’t want tonight to be over!”

 

Elena’s younger sister, Giulia, was twirling around their bedroom in her linen nightgown, her brown hair loose around her shoulders. Elena, already tucked up in their shared bed, smiled indulgently as she watched her sister dance to some imaginary tune with an imaginary partner.

 

“It was a real party, wasn’t it, Elena? I wish we hadn’t left—I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of it.” She stopped dancing, her face flushed, and skipped toward the bed, launching herself onto the covers beside Elena. Giulia sat cross-legged and looked at her sister. “It’s different for you,” she said, pouting a little. “You must have had so many chances to dance in Milan. All those parties and boys! And I was just stuck here, doing nothing fun, ever. When is this stupid war going to be over?”

 

Elena wanted to laugh at the angry expression on Giulia’s face. Instead, she took her sister’s hands in hers. “You’re sixteen, and there’s time, I promise you. When this is all over, I’ll take you to Milan myself. You can meet all the boys—or men—you want.”

 

 

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Three historical fiction novels that changed my life.

 

I love reading. My father taught me to read before I started school, and I was one of those kids who read everything—cereal packages, signs in stores, billboards, shopping lists. If there were words on it, I read it. And to this day, I can think of nothing better than a sunny morning spent in my garden with a cup of coffee and something to read, whether an actual newspaper (I am very old school) or a novel I cannot put down.

 

While I read many different genres, historical fiction holds a special place in my heart. I love immersing myself in worlds separated in time from my own. An absorbing historical fiction book will linger on after I have read the last page, because I will want to delve into the actual history of the people and events I have been reading about. What was true? What was a figment of the author’s imagination? What else can I learn?

 

Here are three of the historical fiction books that have had a huge impact on me.

 

‘The Pillars of the Earth’ by Ken Follett

 

This engrossing masterpiece came out when I was in my twenties living in London. I am a sucker for fat books that are well written because I read very quickly, and sometimes I long for a story that I can spend some time with. This epic about the building of a cathedral in 12^th century England moves the reader to a world that is both immense and intimate at the same time. So much happens in the story and the reader will experience a vast range of emotions. The characters are very well written and I particularly love how grounded they are in their time period. These are not people that exist in the 21^st century simply transplanted to the past. The writer has made a big effort to make sure that their actions and dialogue are relevant to that period in English history. Every time I stand in front of a historic building which is regarded as an architectural feat such as the Duomo in Milan I think about this novel.  

 

‘Labyrinth’ by Kate Mosse

 

Kate and I were students together at Oxford in the early 1980s and I remember how impressed I was when I first discovered that she had started writing and publishing fiction. Kate Mosse is one of the co-founders in 1996 of what has become the highly regarded Women’s Prize for Fiction. But it was with the publication of ‘Labyrinth’ in 2005 that her career skyrocketed. It is a dual timeline novel with two female protagonists, Alice, an archeologist working in France in 2005 and Alaïs, an herbalist from Carcassonne in 1209. The global success of the book demonstrated to me that a popular page-turner could also be richly detailed and well-researched. Kate Mosse bought a house in Carcassonne in 1989, and her love of the area shines through in all her novels that are set there. She was a huge inspiration to me when I decided to write a novel based in Le Marche, Italy where my own home is situated.  

 

‘The Poisonwood Bible’ by Barbara Kingsolver

 

This book merits a place amongst my all-time top ten books. Barbara Kingsolver tells the story of the Price family, missionaries who decamp from Georgia, U.S.A. to the Belgian Congo in 1959. The father Nathan Price is a religious zealot and disciplinarian who subjects his wife, his daughters and his congregation to increasingly deranged and abusive behavior. The story is narrated by the wife Orleanna and each of the four daughters in turn. The brilliance of the technique is that, although we never hear directly from the Congolese people, the different, often close-minded views expressed by each of the family members slowly illuminate how much more rational, intelligent and clear-eyed the native congregation is compared with the supposed enlightened missionaries. I have read this book several times and after each reading despair that my writing will never be able to reach those heights.

 

If you have not read one of these books, please do yourself a favor and seek them out. I promise you will not be disappointed! 

 

 

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Kate Bristow was born in London. She fell in love with reading when she got her first library card at the age of four. Her first attempt at writing and publishing for a wide audience was a local newspaper typed laboriously at home on her mother’s typewriter while at primary (elementary) school in north London. It is surely a loss to cutting-edge journalism that only one issue was ever produced. Kate divides her time between her small-but-perfectly-formed modern home in Los Angeles and her five-hundred-year-old farmhouse just outside Sassocorvaro in Italy.

 

 

Author Links:

 

Website: https://www.katebristow.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katebristowauthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katebristowauthor/

 

Universal Buy Link: https://1link.st/katebristow

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION

 

Kate Bristow will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

Enter here:

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4738

Follow the tour:

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