Something terrible happened to Catherine Gaillard when she was a small child - something so traumatic that for thirty years she couldn't bring herself to leave Montview, the cloistered mountaintop college town in Tennessee where she grew up. But she has not missed the "real" world. Cat's life on the mountain has been wonderful. She adores her husband, who buttresses her against the world outside; she cherishes her country garden and her friends from the college. Montview has served her well.Now, for the first time, she and Joe have ventured out of their haven into the careening panorama of Italy to attend the Roman wedding of their Montview friends Colin and Maria. From Rome they will travel to Venice and on through the hill towns of Tuscany, where, Cat feels, she will be up high and safe again.But at first none of Italy seems safe to her. It is frantic and hot; its people seem totally alien, its raw sensuality terrifying. Gradually, however, Cat becomes enthralled by Italy's hectic beauty and vitality. She is seduced by everything: art and architecture, food and wine, the sheer living weight of its history. She burns to share it all with Joe, but as her old fear heals and she grows stronger, he seems to turn away from her. It is almost as if Italy diminishes Joe. The only person Cat feels real connection with is Sam Forrest, a celebrated and charismatic American painter who joins the four Southerners on the trip through the hill towns of Tuscany.As she has done in the past to great acclaim, Anne Rivers Siddons probes deeply into the multiple meanings of love and relationships refracted through the prism of a woman's eyes. Endowed with a marvelous Italian setting and rich, compelling characters, Hill Towns is a rare novel of depth and deliverance. It is the work of a gifted writer at the height of her storytelling powers. Read Less