Piranhas in the Scampi: How I Restored a Seventeenth-Century Farmhouse in Tuscany and Lived to Tell the Tale

Piranhas in the Scampi is the story of an experience that began in Sheldon Silverstein's teenage years, when his obsessive love of Italy took root after seeing the movie Sunflower, starring Sophia Loren, his dream woman. It culminated years later, when he fell head over heels in love with Elenora Monini, a modern version of Sophia, while working in Rome on a fi lm project. She was his ideal female turned femme fatale-a woman who makes grown men uproot from their homelands, transplant themselves onto Italian soil, and pay homage to that wellworn cliché, "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it."