The sharp clip of footsteps on the newly laid tiles made me look up. Two tall men wearing expensive dark suits and sunglasses strode purposefully into my vision. "This is like a scene from The Godfather," I thought as laughter bubbled up in my throat. "Where"s the violin case with a rifle?" Then I noticed that one of them carried a briefcase and suddenly it didn"t seem so funny. The book is a light-hearted view of life in a rural Italian village in the 1970s. It is a picture of an Italy that is long gone. Aged 22, Valerie left a comfortable life in Poole, Dorset, to follow her Italian fiance to his home in northern Italy. In 1977, Piussogno was a sleepy mountain village where nothing much happened apart from the occasional triple birth of lambs. Valerie"s arrival was cause for gossip. The decision to build a disco meant she must be rich and it was also a foregone conclusion that she was pregnant. They were wrong on both fronts. Her new life involved living with her future...