Valerie Thornhill draws on a long and intimate experience of Italy to create a gripping story that reveals the way we adapt and restore our environment in response to turns of fate. One of the many strong characters in the novel is a town with its surrounding countryside. Olivia is in a state of shock when she stumbles off a train below the Tuscan hill town of Montesasso. Almost impulsively she buys an ancient ruined farmhouse on a steeply terraced hillside.

"From the plain, Montesasso looked like Bethlehem in a presepio, an elaborate Nativity with scenes dreamed up by the artist to set around the humble stable. Outside the town walls the countryside with ploughs, oxen and sowers scattering seed eternally caught in the humdrum rhythm of life. My eyes ran across the terraces, tilled and sown under the shimmer of olives into green and brown ribbons, down slopes with vineyards to the fresh furrows on the plain below."

For Olivia, a teacher in Surrey, and her art-restorer partner Paul, their purchase is just that, a Nativity - a rebirth after suffering.

In Restoration is a fascinating read for several reasons. There is a strong story-line; the characters are memorable and credible while the descriptions and details paint a full visual picture. One is transported to specific Italian and English landscapes with their buildings, characters and views. Why is Olivia’s need to find her father and the olive groves which inspired her name of paramount importance to her? Why did her partner, Paul, become a restorer of paintings in Florence after the devastating floods of 1966, and what drove the couple to seek refuge from a personal tragedy in a remote Tuscan valley?

The story also binds together the often amusing hopes and fears of two families while contrasting suburban existence in Guildford, Surrey, with the rural experiences of centuries-old cultivation of terraced hillsides and the enigmatic stonemason Gianni. Through him the remote Etruscans are a continuing presence, and memories are still alive in those picturesque hills where partisan fighters and allied soldiers hid during the last war.

Like the wines produced from the local hillsides, this is a novel to be savoured.