Blog Tour - Secrets in Sicily

Publication date 7th August 2018

About the book

Sun-drenched, touching and inspirational, this is your ultimate summer read for 2018, perfect for fans of Rosanna Ley and Victoria Hislop. Sicily, 1977 Ten-year-old Lily and family arrive for their annual summer holiday in Sicily. Adopted as a toddler, Lily's childhood has been idyllic.
But a chance encounter with a local woman on the beach changes everything…. 10 years later... Ever since that fateful summer Lily's picture-perfect life, and that of her family, has been in turmoil.
The secrets of the baking hot shores of Sicily are calling her back, and Lily knows that the answers she has been so desperately seeking can only be found if she returns to her beloved island once more....
Fans of Victoria Hislop, Rosanna Ley, Victoria Hislop and Domenica de Rosa will fall in love with the stunning and evocative Italian backdrop to this sweeping family epic. 

Buy links:
Amazon: mybook.to/SecretsinSicily
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2tSiGr8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2lPla5h
Google Play: http://bit.ly/2z3mT08

About the Author
Penny Feeny has lived and worked in Cambridge, London and Rome. Since settling in Liverpool many years ago she has been an arts administrator, editor, radio presenter and advice worker. Her short fiction has been widely published and broadcast and won several awards. Her first novel, That Summer in Ischia, was one of the summer of 2011's best selling titles.  

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Extract from Secrets in Sicily
Jess’s memory was really rather poor, Lily felt, whereas she could remember absolutely everything. (Since the age of three, at any rate. Apparently you weren’t expected to remember anything much before that because your brain wasn’t ready. That was why she had no recollection of the earthquake and only faint images of the nuns floating about in their snowy wimples. And Villa Ercole. And Alex and the bowl of ripe peaches.)
‘The quarry,’ she went on. ‘Where we went for a picnic.’ The ancient site had been blissfully deserted. The grass had grown long and golden yellow, butterflies had spangled the bushes. And sections of great stone cylinders had been strewn casually around, as if a giant had dropped a fistful of building blocks.
‘Oh, you mean Cave di Cusa?’
‘Alex said the piece would have chipped off the rock when they were carving the pillars and probably the slave made it into a figure in his break.’
‘Slaves didn’t have breaks,’ said Jess. ‘Is that really what Alex told you?’
‘Sort of,’ mumbled Lily, trying to recall her father’s history lesson: how the slaves had run away when the invaders came, flinging down their tools in the middle of their work – and how the quarry had been untouched ever since. ‘Anyway, Harry’s gone and lost it and I’ll never be able to find it.’
‘I buried it,’ he said. ‘To keep it safe.’
‘Liar, you threw it away.’
‘Come and finish your snacks,’ coaxed Jess. ‘Then you can pretend you’re archaeologists digging things up, like Toby.’ Toby Forrester was Alex’s best friend from school. They’d worked on digs together, but Toby was the one who’d become a full-time archaeologist. Gerald was his uncle.
‘I don’t know where to begin,’ complained Lily.
‘I don’t see how it can be so important if you forgot about it for a year.’
‘It just is.’ Objects became important when you invested them with special powers. Lily hadn’t given the carving a thought all the time they’d been at home. But now that they were back in Sicily where votive offerings multiplied at roadside shrines and figurines of patron saints swung from car mirrors and ancient sarcophagi and sacrificial altars littered the countryside, obviously a piece of chiselled marble would take on a special and miraculous identity. ‘I can’t leave the beach without it.’
Jess sighed. ‘Do you think you can remember where you buried it, Harry?’
He pointed at a churned-up patch of sand and then darted towards their umbrella before he could be asked to help further.
‘I’ll have to go after him,’ said Jess. ‘Will you be all right, darling?’
Lily ignored the question. She plunged her spade to the hilt, so deep and so fiercely that its handle snapped. Then she had to scrabble with her fingers, but all she turned up were old sweet wrappers and cigarette butts. She felt tears gathering and her face reddening with frustration because she had set herself such an impossible task.
The people stretched out on their towels were taking little notice, but a woman, a stranger, picked a way through the bodies and crouched down beside her. She wasn’t dressed for the beach. She wore a tight skirt and a sleeveless shirt with the collar turned up to protect her neck. She had dark curling hair and enormous sunglasses that covered most of her face. Her top lip curved over the bottom one in a way that made her look slightly sulky, until she smiled. She smiled now and opened her palm to show Lily. ‘Is yours?’ she said.
Lily was surprised at being addressed in English and then delighted when she saw what she was offered. ‘Yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘Where did you find it?’
At this the woman shrugged as if she didn’t understand the question. She was gazing intently at Lily through her sunglasses but she didn’t take them off. ‘You stay here in Roccamare?’
Lily gestured behind her. ‘Up on the hill, in Villa Ercole.’
The lady nodded, as if it was the answer she was expecting, as if English people never stayed anywhere else. And it was true that most of the visitors to this coastline were Sicilian, that most of them not only knew each other but were related too. Gerald stood out as an eccentric foreigner. Lily scrambled to her feet and said, ‘Grazie mille,’ in her best accent.
The lady smiled again and said, ‘Piacere.’ She was still kneeling, looking up at Lily. ‘Come ti chiama?’
‘My name’s Lily.’
‘That’s pretty. Arrivederci, Lily.’
‘Arrivederci, signora,’ said Lily, skipping in triumph to Jess and Harry, who were packing everything up as they couldn’t stay on the beach in the full blast of the afternoon.
Lunch at the villa was always followed by a siesta. Lying on her bed, on top of the sheets with an electric fan whirring in the corner, Lily tucked the carving inside her pillowcase to keep it safe, though she’d have to take it out before Dolly changed the bedlinen. When Dolly wasn’t cooking, she was washing and cleaning, sweeping and scrubbing. She would put down powder to get rid of the ants and hang up sticky strips of paper to trap the flies. She was waging war against nature, Alex said, trying to stop it from crossing the threshold. As in her dealings with Gerald, she foolishly believed she could win.
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