Tallahassee Author Marina Brown, who is also a regular contributor to the Tallahassee Democrat as well as being a celebrated visual artist, has released a new novel.
Brown's latest book - her sixth as listed by Amazon - is called "The Orphan of Pitigliano." She said Pitigliano is an ancient, exotic, mysterious and very real village in Italy that is very familiar with.
"Actually, I've been there many, many times probably starting 20 or 30 years ago. It's an amazing place! It's set in the rolling hills of Tuscany. It's a 14th Century hill town circled by a wall. There's a palace. Unusually, though, there's a ghetto. Back in medieval times as it turns out, Pitigliano had a very large Jewish population; in fact they called it 'Little Jerusalem.'"
More on the story's connection to that Jewish ghetto in a moment. But Brown said the region's early settlers preceded the Roman Empire by several millennia.
"And the area around it is filled with these Etruscan tombs because the Etruscans, who were precedents of the Romans, they put all kinds of wonderful antiquities in these tombs for their next life."
Brown intimated the on-the-scene research she did for this novel led her to some fascinating encounters.
"I actually got to meet some tomb robbers and went out with them one night as they explored the forest for soft earth over which would be the tomb beneath it. And I talked with old people. I learned Italian so I could interview some of these old people who had been there at the Allied bombings. And I got to talk with people about what's called 'il malocchio,' which is the 'evil eye.'"
And despite the fact Brown is a rational, science-believing, thoroughly modern individual, she's had some first-hand experience with these ancient curse as well.
"I used to be a psychiatric nurse many years ago and I had met a woman in Boston - a patient who was brought to us - who had fallen into this wasting coma, although physically everything was fine. She was an Italian woman visiting in Boston and doctors had no idea what was wrong. But they eventually called in a priest, who said, 'She has the malocchio, the evil eye. Send some of her clothing back to Italy. There they will take the curse off and they'll send it back and she'll be better.' And believe it or not, I saw her a few months later and she was better."
In fact, 'The Orphan of Pitigliano's' opening scene involves a similar scenario. And Brown discovered this is also a very old phenomenon.
"I read a number of books by Nancy DeGrummond who is a professor at FSU and an expert in Etruscan antiquities of various kinds and one book that she put me onto has to do with Etruscan mirrors. And those mirrors actually play a part because theoretically you can turn the evil eye from you by reflecting the glare of it back at the person. And so that little amulet was seen back in Etruscan days as well."
Which all swirls around and through the major characters in Brown's novel.
"All three of the main characters end up feeling themselves to be orphans even though some aren't really. But it's that search for identity; the person you were supposed to be or the person you will become, or who you've contrived. Yes, there's deception, some magic, a lot of courage along with the tragedy of the war and the things that happened to these people. I mean, that's part of the author's responsibility to have lots of twists and turns and questions that keep the reader turning the pages and not able to put the book down."
Still, it's a book that, despite all the connection to mystical cultures and superstitions is by no means a first cousin to 'Lord of the Rings.'
"This book is not fantasy. Fantasy is not my metier, even though I've tried and some people are so good at it. I think you would call it more 'magical realism' so it's always grounded in reality and it's up to the reader to guess where that line quavers back and forth."
"The Orphan of Pitigliano," the latest real - and magical - novel by Tallahassee's Marina Brown.
