The herb garden (Salani 2024) is the new romance novel by Olimpia Brandi d’Altavillathe incognito name of a famous Italian writer with over 300 thousand copies.
“The village was located in the hilly part of Antea Marina, not far from the town center and the beaches, but sheltered from the frenzy that characterized the summer months”.
In that corner of Liguria there was nothing that could push tourists to break the peace of the Delfino family.
That small group of buildings around the large courtyard had always been called the Borgo. The villa with pink walls, which would soon be covered by the violet flowers of the bougainvillea and then by the blue ones of the plumbago, had been divided into two apartments after the death of Linda’s grandparents. Linda’s parents lived in one, her sister Clementina lived in the other with her husband and her son. The farmhouse on one side of the courtyard had become her home for her, Fabio and little Adele. The former barn, transformed into a charming villa, was rented to Greta, her inseparable friend from sixth grade onwards. And a little further along the driveway, there was the old concierge, where after a few days a new tenant, a thriller writer, would arrive.
In the center of the courtyard, the Herb Garden, the small wonder created by Linda’s grandmother, the heart of the village.
Closed by a high box hedge, there was a wrought iron gate halfway along the side facing the villa. It was a set of flowerbeds in which all the herbs in the world grew: there were perennial bushes of laurel and sage, rosemary and basil, tufts of lemon grass, chives, tarragon, St. Peter’s wort, horseradish, coriander, three different types of mint…
Since the grandmother was no longer there, all the inhabitants of the village took care of the Herb Garden, even if the main amount of work fell to the gardener Adelmo.
Linda loved the atmosphere of her home, the place she loved most in the world, the center of the universe, but Linda’s thoughts were not peaceful, something weighed on her soul. Greta wasn’t calm either, in love with a married man, while Clementina had just discovered that her husband was cheating on her.
“I never want to see him again. Never!”.
The marvelous Ligurian Riviera, with its breathtaking views, is the protagonist of this passionate romance novel, to which we wish a lot of luck, which will be read and appreciated even by the most disenchanted readers during the long-awaited and imminent summer holidays.
Magical and enchanted is the Herb Gardena place suspended in time, in which the female protagonists of the novel sitting on the bench confide their sorrows to each other, drawing the strength to move forward and overcome small and large difficulties.
Olimpia Brandi D’Altavilla, pseudonym of a very well-known and loved writer, expressed a wish for this novel:
“In a time when everyone is jostling to always be at the center of attention, I would like to disappear, exist only through what I write. And feel free to give voice to other sides of my creativity too.”
