Picture this: an artist lives in a beautiful home on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. She travels to Rome to indulge in the art and beauty and, in an ‘aha’ moment, remembers, “I’m Italian!” Because she is a woman who listens to her intuition, memoir author Angela Paolantonio is guided to the land of her ancestors in Southern Italy. She falls in love, finds long-lost family and eventually buys her grandmother’s childhood home. Sound like a movie?
In her memoir, The Ghosts of Italy, Angela’s words and images transport us to Italy to experience magic and sensual pleasures found in this mountain village.
However, it is not all a fairytale romance. As a single woman traveling alone in old-world Italy, she has to learn to navigate age-old cultural norms. Her strength and bold spirit are inspirational. Call it magic, serendipity, or maybe a dispatch from a past life, Angela is compelled to listen and act on her inner voice.
This memoir will interest those who have an inner drive to self discovery, or who are compelled by an enormous force telling them to get going. Angela takes on the challenge in a way many of us admire in our favorite heroine. She wants to fit in, and she’s drawn to discover her family history. This memoir shows her tenacity, but it is more than that. She is a person who lives on her intuition. It begs the question: How far removed are we from our ancestors, anyway?
When I spoke to her in early June, she was in her home in the small Southern Italian village of Calitri, east of Naples, in the Southern Apennines. Her village was preparing for Corpus Domini, the last of three Catholic processions to commemorate Easter Sunday. Here’s a glimpse into our conversation ~ ....
Author interview by Ellen Shick for Pink Pangea, Inspiring Women Travelers. Click LINK to continue reading
