Okay, here's a few of paragraphs from my book, but I wouldn't call it literature. It's just a memoir:
After refueling on some salami and provolone cheese, we drove at ludicrous speeds through cobblestone roads, to streets, then to highways. We popped off a toll road into dreams from my past, because I could’ve sworn I’d dreamed it before. As if my breath had been stolen by a gargantuan sky. I mean big, like the state of Montana, a clear endless canopy above our heads. The air I inhaled felt like an awakening in my lungs. Is this what joy is supposed to feel like?
While driving under this possibility of joy, I hardly knew I was traveling in a car. The shock absorbers on Alessandro’s BMW were well made and we quietly bumped and hummed as the tires looped over the hillsides. Through the windows I could see the elevation dropping over the steep pathways as we climbed through the valleys with wall-to-wall pastures. Each bend outlined soft textures of parallelograms and trapeziums in brilliant shades of vermilion and Kelly greens. They stitched together bushy yellow trees of rusted leaves, which left my brain synapses transition into the 4th of July....
In the hills below the Alps, in Emilia, Romagna, we finally arrived at Sandra and Valter’s. The young Italian couple shared a three-bedroom apartment with Alessandro and Tanya back in Florida. By the time we got there, the sky had faded dark into purple and the temperature dropped. Past dinnertime, snow fell on the ground the first week of April.
Their big house echoed with Italian tile and no carpeting. It wasn’t the most comfortable, but I was grateful to have a free place to stay. Plus, they were the most hospitable people I had ever known. They had gnocchi waiting. I found that most people in Italy were very hospitable in ways that sort of blew my mind. They’d invite you into their home, allow you to sleep there, cook you supper, and sit with you in their living rooms, making you their guest of honor. Most will do this even if you’re only loosely related to them. Sometimes, if you knew the same guy they once knew, or that guy knew someone your parents went to grade school with, that would do. “Come on in, mi casa es tu casa.” It’s crazy. What American would do this? I was basically passed from house to house in this way. The trusting generosity of others. It was the only way I would’ve been able to travel around Northern Italy without having to dip into my small purse of $444....