The Copper People - Barbara March

Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote:

     “The name of Italy has magic in its very syllables.”

That became Barbara March's experience.   ‘Stranieri’ is a word one hears often in Italy, simply because there are as many tourists as there are Italians. The word means stranger and one does feels strange amongst these passionate, sometimes secretive people,  always resistant to change in their customs, especially the food which is the best in the world.  It is also a difficult place to leave,once you have been accepted and become part of their lives.  But the time came when Barbara and her husband, Alan Scarfe (writer, actor) had to leave.  And since her Italian experience never left her,  she sat in her study and wrote a novella.  She had found the right format and so she wrote ‘Copper People’ partly as a way to show her love for the people and the country and partly to use their food, customs and history in a story that takes place in a similar hilltop village that held a secret.  Religion, both Catholic and Pagan, plays a very important part in the novella. And Barbara, herself, had participated in many of their ‘sagras’ and holy days while she was livingthere.

The Copper People is a short novel about an older woman simply wanting to learn a new language, but who ends up having a completely different experience to what she had expected when she and her husband first arrived in the village that was built in the 6th century.  It is a novel about food, love and friendship as much as it is about a secretive society.