Siracusa by Delia Ephron

I like to wake up 7 days a week at 6 a.m. and go to bed by 10 p.m. My husband Jeff prefers to wake up as late as possible and stay up well past midnight. So almost every day there is at least an hour or sometimes two each morning when I am up alone writing or reading fascinating articles on my phone. The screen on my phone is so tiny, but sometimes the articles blow me away, as this “New York Times” article did: After 54 Years We Fell In Love. After Five Months I Got Leukemia by Delia Ephron. I read anything Ephron (Nora, Delia, Hallie and Amy), so of course I knew that Delia had lost her sister, Nora, and husband, Jerome within the last few years. However, I did not know that she had found love again. Since Nora died, I have been quietly studying Delia and loved her recent book “Siracusa.” She and her husband used to travel a lot with friends, and this novel is the story of two couples that travel together on a trip to Rome and Siracusa, Sicily. The characters include Michael and his wife Lizzie, and Finn and his wife Taylor and their 10-year-old daughter, Snow. During this trip the relationships between the two couples begin to unravel in a part-thriller and part-soap opera kind of way. The characters take rotating turns narrating each chapter while exploring the themes of marriage, passion, betrayal and aging.  The dynamic of the vacationing couples is forever altered when a new character arrives in Italy. Ephron makes a declaimer at the beginning of the book that this is a work of fiction. But then again, her sister Nora wrote “Heartburn” after her real life husband Carl Berstein had an affair. So there are always many different layers to any Ephron book.  Everything is copy. To purchase this book on Amazon click here.