Take a famous, but stressed, woman--abstract painter from Washington DC; an infatuated sculptor from NY with a beautiful, not so dumb, model. Add a stingy, but elegant professor; a gallery owner with an adolescent daughter and an alcoholic ex-wife and put all these Americans in a small town one summer in Sicily. Not forgetting either: a bureaucrat from Rome; a crack Sicilian photographer; an Italian sculptor, his workshop and his family; helpful neighbors and even an English racetrack driver and four Sicilian students on vacation with time on their hands---and there you have the cast of this amusing and intriguing story.
About the Author: G.C. Dallas was born in Kent, England. She did her art studies in London, Paris and Florence. She became an American citizen at New Haven, Connecticut, where her husband was studying for his Ph.D. at Yale. Three of their children were born in New Haven and after entering the U.S. Diplomatic Service, a fourth child was born at their first post in Florence, Italy. The family moved often, which made for a very busy diplomatic and family life, with an average of less than 3 years of residence from post to post: From Florence, to Washington D.C., to Paris, France, to Saigon (Bangkok for the family--for two hot but important years), to Paris again then to the National War College, Washington D.C. Next they went to Rabat, Morocco for three memorable years followed by a year in Providence, Rhode Island (where husband, Francis De Tarr was diplomat-in-residence). Than back to Washington D.C., to Brussels, Belgium, and back to Paris, all with visits in Berkeley, California (where Dallas's husband was born) and Washington, D.C. when her husband was assigned there and she worked in an education organization. She has successfully shown her paintings and her prints in Paris, Brussels and Italy, including in one-man shows. The painting on the cover of "Summer in Sicily" is one of her works from a private collection. She has done translations from Italian and French into English and published poetry. Her base in the United States is PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire and the family meets in their old house in Tuscany each summer. Her European base is Montparnasse, Paris, where her husband is well known for his books on French political history and she divides her time between writing and painting. Her travels have been a great inspiration for this book and for her several manuscripts. This book is dedicated to her brother, Philip, whose love and great knowledge of Italy was important to Dallas. He was a specialist in Italian wines and wrote two books on the great wines of Italy--as well as on other subjects.