The Miracles of Santo Fico

If you savored Joanne Harris's Chocolat or Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, if you dream of honeymooning in San Gimignano or you've ever stood in a specialty foods store sighing over imported olive oil, you will fall hard for The Miracles of Santo Fico. By turns sentimental, romantic, and mischievous, D.L. Smith's debut novel is set in a small Italian hill town, like hundreds of others, that has been in decline for 60 years. Remote and dusty, with a dry fountain in its modest piazza, Santo Fico only attracts tourists when local boys change the road signs. But there is one hidden treasure in the grubby old church--a perfectly preserved fresco of St. Francis that looks strangely, miraculously like the work of Giotto--and when a black sheep named Leo Pizzolo tempts God by trying to profit from it, he must come up with a few miracles of his own to save the town. Expect picturesque charm, old wrongs made right, and a happy ending for all. --Regina Marler