01/08/2026
Books have a magical way of forging friendships.
Last winter, I was staying in an apartment in Perugia inside a centuries-old building. During the day, I was out exploring art exhibitions and Etruscan sites. But the dark came early.
In the evenings, I started reading Linda Lappin's novel, The Etruscan, which had just come out in a second edition. By the end of the first chapter, I was hooked.
As the sun set, I hurried back to my apartment and curled up in a chair in my ancient quarters to pick the book up again. I marveled at Linda's ability to capture that particularly weird and wonderful Etruscan vibe on the page. I flew through it, regretting when it was over so fast.
My friend Mary Jane Cryan (another friend I met because... books) gave me Linda's email address, and I wrote to tell her how much I loved The Etruscan.
That led to more messages, then dinner, then a generous invitation to stay, and wonderful conversations about writing and culture and family and continents separated by oceans.
Now Linda has written about one of my own books, The Keeper of Lost Art, in a review for the California Review of Books.
And I've been back out to Linda's neck of the woods, venturing intrepidly into the wilds of Tusciaâin the rain and the cold and the heatâinto some of the most unjustly neglected corners of ancient Italy.
I always feel a thrill, a chill, a physical jolt of electricity when I approach an Etruscan site. Sometimes I half expect one of Linda's most memorable characters, the mysterious and charismatic Count Federigo, to be waiting for me just inside a T-shaped doorway.
When I start counting all the friends I've made because of books, I'm amazed. Book friends really do make the best ones.
https://calirb.com/keeper-of-lost-art-by-laura-morelli/
