Tuscan Echoes, a Season in Italy

As a writer, I was greatly impressed with Mark Gordon Smith's ability to transport readers to this fascinating country with simple, evocative descriptions. As a lover of everything Tuscan, I felt I was walking alongside Smith on his journey. And as the son of Italian immigrants (also from Tuscany), I felt my ties renewed and strengthened by this beautiful love song.

"What is it, travelers have asked for ages, about Italy? For those whose ancestors came from these valleys, from this country, the answer probably lies in their lineage. For the rest of us, the answer simply lies in the timeless view of verdant abundance below room twenty four. "P 72. Tuscan Echoes, A Season in ItalyIn Tuscan Echoes, A Season in Italy, Mark G. Smith has managed an amazing feat. He has written an exceptional travel book without any pictures.Author Mark G. Smith writes with such intimacy and intensely personal imagery that the reader can only imagine he/she is traveling side by side with the author. This comprehensive, dramatic and spiritual journey through some of Italy's most spectacular landscapes and historical landmarks is presented in masterful literary style.Tuscan Echoes, A Season in Italy is the perfect length at 170 pages, for a quick intellectual get away. As the pages turn, you as the reader will be transported to Florence, Venice, Assisi, Umbria and Tuscany. Images of the landscape so vivid you will imagine you can smell the dark richness of the espresso and feel the heartbeat of the cobblestones in the piazza through the soles of your feet. You will be immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of the Italian culture. Quaint cafes will tantalize your senses. Friendly, out going people will welcome you and majestic churches will provide soulful inspiration. By the last page you will feel as if you truly hear the Tuscan Echoes.Author Mark G. Smith's personal experience with Italy has been life long. He lived near Florence as a child and as an adult, spent more than thirty years traveling this fascinating country .His passion for the Tuscan region is evident in his intimate descriptions, which evoke a deep longing in the readers to experience Italy for themselves. This memoir represents one season. If your average day is just plain hectic, then this book will allow you to escape for a few hours to the land of serenity, beauty and passion. Give yourself a truly enjoyable journey of discovery. This book would also make an excellent gift for your favorite armchair traveler or as a take along guide for the serious traveler.Reviewer: Shirley Roe, Allbooks Reviews

Tuscan Echoes: A Season In Italy by Mark Gordon Smith brings together a blend of memoir and philosophy in the author's varied, sometimes eccentric, yet always engaging ruminations upon Italy. Memories of Italian childhood are combined with a modern-day revisit and a dedicated quest to perceive and understand what is the essence of Italian life and culture. An articulate and attention engaging addition to any library biography collection, Tuscan Echoes is a superb and original extended meditation on nationality and identity.

Exquisite travelogue memoir of author Smith's "season in Italy," notable for its richly descriptive passages about place, its tenderness of spirit, and its remarkable effectiveness at translating with exactitude, the grand sense of nostalgia Smith feels for "the sights and sounds that have haunted" his dreams for years.Writes he:"The wood-covered hills of Monte Subasio, above Assisi, were well known to Saint Francis. Before our class meets each day, there is time to explore the many paths that cross the mountain. The fresh air and cooling shadows of the forest offer welcome privacy from the city below. I spend a part of each day in the high reaches of the hills. As I approach the intersection of two paths, I stop to take in the view.Trees on each side of the trail gather closer overhead and rise to a meeting point, creating an archway. The shade-dappled path leads up into a nave as light, filtering through trees, takes on the colors of stained-glass windows. The sun pierces through the pine-scented haze of woodland air; its rays fall on the dusty, earthen floor. Birds move back and forth across the path, their music filling the air."Readers join Smith for a vicarious trip to Tuscany, Umbria, Assisi and Venice - and to Florence and its surrounds, where in the 1950s Smith and his family lived along the Tyrrhenian Sea.Smith entered the corporate business world - and then left that world to write - and owners of Tuscan Echoes will be especially glad that he did.

I have just finished reading Tuscan Echoes, a Season in Italy and had to take a moment to comment. I have read a lot of other works about Tuscany, most recently 'Under the Tuscan Sun.' What Mark is able to achieve in his work is a unique, unusually sensuous, passionate look into the lives of Italians. Rather than make the usual pass at museums and art galleries, the more typical tourist attractions, he directs our attention to the small, hardly noticed, moments in the day-to-day lives of Italians. His visions of travelling across Tuscany and Umbria and his ability to put me in the places he writes about is so rare that I found myself putting the book down, from time to time, closing my eyes and taking a moment to see myself in the places he describes. It seems to me that this book is ideal for both the travelled visitor to Italy as well as the the first time visitor who seeks the unusual, less traveled, by-ways of Italy. You should read this book!