A Silent Joy: The Diaries of an Italian Hill Farm

Cultural Writing. Memoir. Etain Addey's diary of her life on an Italian hill farm is a "faithful account of what it means to re-inhabit one's self and one's place, omitting neither the practicalities nor the feelings the experience calls forth"-- Giuseppe Moretti. Set in the Umbrian hills of central Italy, where a modern Benedictine abbey rises above the ruins of a temple dedicated to Genio Silvanus--god of forests, fields, shepherds and human fertility--Addey's book details the difficult process of "becoming native again" in a world dominated by technology and urban culture. A SILENT JOY is the tale of a life lived in direct dependency upon nature, and evokes an alternative vision of life in which our "non-human neighbours...fill our days with delight and disaster."