Sara Alexander’s new novel Under a Sardinian Sky weaves an inter-generational tale of immense love and sacrifice. Read an excerpt of the novel here.

About ‘Under a Sardinian Sky’ by Sara Alexander

Sometimes a family’s deepest silences hide the most important secrets. For Mina, a London-based travel writer, the enigmatic silence surrounding her aunt Carmela has become a personal obsession. Carmela disappeared from her Italian hometown long ago and is mentioned only in fragments and whispers. Mina has resisted prying, respectful of her family’s Sardinian reserve. But now, with her mother battling cancer, it’s time to learn the truth.

In 1952, Simius is a busy Sardinian town surrounded by fertile farms and orchards. Carmela Chirigoni, a farmer’s daughter and talented seamstress, is engaged to Franco, son of the area’s wealthiest family. Everyone agrees it’s a good match. But Carmela’s growing doubts about Franco’s possessiveness are magnified when she meets Captain Joe Kavanagh. Joe, an American officer stationed at a local army base, is charismatic, intelligent, and married. Hired as his interpreter, Carmela resolves to ignore her feelings, knowing that any future together must bring upheaval and heartache to both families.

As Mina follows the threads of Carmela’s life to uncover her fate, she will discover a past still deeply alive in the present, revealing a story of hope, sacrifice, and extraordinary love.

Read an excerpt from ‘Under a Sardinian Sky’

Seven years had passed since the roars of V-Day before the Sardinian town of Simius flung off its ashen veil of world war and threw an Assumption Day fiesta full of spectacle and hope. Children squealed beneath the strings of lights that rendered the stark, dusty central promenade unrecognizable. The narrow houses that lined the square, crushed together like skinny matriarchs pushing against one another for attention, boasted long strips of red and green fabric hung beneath their weary shutters. Benevolent, rosy-cheeked men butchered nougat. Farmers sold their pungent pecorino. Women flogged slabs of bitter almond brittle. And yet the Simiuns would never throw their hands in the air with the abandon of the singsong Neapolitans or caterwaul into the night with the joie de vivre gesticulation of the Romans.

Carmela looked over at the portly accordion player, who squeezed life into his instrument and bellowed a ballu tundu, a traditional dance performed in a circle, heralding the start of the festivities. A troupe from a neighboring town, south of Simius, swarmed the piazza. They interlocked arms in a tight line and began to dance. The accordion player’s fingers raced up and down the keyboard as the tune whirled into a fast ditty.

Carmela admired the female dancers’ costumes, and not simply because she and her colleagues at her godmother’s tailoring studio had made them. Their starched white headscarves were wrapped around their heads in a complicated crisscross pattern, held in place with gold pins on either side. The scarves framed their faces, drawing attention to the dark twinkle of their almond eyes, much like a Spanish mantilla or the veils of Arabian princesses; historic invaders from both places had left their mark on her island’s history and traditional dress. They wore billowing white blouses with intricate laced cuffs and collars. Over these were very tight-fitting, sleeveless bodices in bright red satin with gold embroidery, which cinched in their tiny waists. The neckline was cut low to allow the ruffles of the collars to show. Their plain, long black skirts with angular creases were topped with narrow aprons festooned with vibrant needlework depicting flowers, birds, and patterns in primary colors as bold and joyous as their expressions were inscrutable. Around their necks were velvet chokers from which coral and turquoise crucifixes hung. In their ears, garnets and cornelians, with intricate gold settings as delicate as fine lace, swung as they bobbed into their steps. At the yoke of the neckline each dancer had a brooch, made from two flattened, golden conical shapes, like tiny Bronze Age shields, set with coral or turquoise at their centers.

The men, dressed in long black woolen waistcoats despite the balmy August evening, glided in white shirts with sleeves that ballooned toward tight, starched cuffs. The black tunics below flared out like skirts, reaching down to the middle of their thighs, where the tops of their white cotton trouser legs underneath puffed over the rims of their high black boots. The length of their velveteen black hats flopped over to one side, like a hare’s ear.

The dancers stared out into the distance, their shoulders perfectly level, as their feet shuffled, syncopated and synchronized. Despite the joyous melody, their expressions were cool with indifference, as if their feet moved involuntarily. Their torsos were held bolt upright; they wove in and out of formations like ornate planks. Carmela would have liked to lose herself in the colorful beauty of the display but couldn’t help dissecting their costumes with the mathematical eye of the seamstress who had crafted them over the past year. Each autumn brought a slew of commissions for the numerous summer festivals in which the dancers would perform. As she tried to commit any improvements she would make to memory, there was an urgent tug at her elbow. “We’re a girl down!” Carmela’s sister Piera was flushed with panic. It made her look wirier than she was already.

“What?”

“Ripped her ankle. You’re on!”

“Nonsense!”

“Here’s her costume,” Piera said, shoving a mass of color in front of Carmela. With that she grabbed Carmela’s arm and dragged her down into the warren of darkened streets in a frantic search for an abandoned doorway to change in.

“This is ridiculous!” Carmela cried out, trying to catch her breath. Piera cut a sudden turn downhill, passing their Zio Raimondo’s shoe shop. Then she jerked to a halt beneath the arches of The Old Spanish House, a high-walled diminutive fortress left by the sixteenth-century Spaniard invaders her islanders were so proud of.

“Just ask one of the Nugheddu girls!” Carmela said, trying to fight off her sister’s quick hands scrambling over the buttons on the back of her dress.

“I’m not asking any of those trollops from the next town!”

“Then tell the dancer’s partner to sit it out too, for goodness sake!” Carmela snapped, quickly reaching to catch her own dress as it fell over her slip toward the cobbles. “Piera!” she gasped, seizing her sister’s hands. “Have you lost your mind?!”

“I let you out of my sight for two seconds and you’re down an alley getting undressed!” a voice called out. The spidery silhouette of Carmela’s fiancé, Franco, crept round the corner. She yanked her dress up high over her front, covering as much of her body as she could, though the warm night air still brushed over her bare shoulders.

“Perhaps you can knock some sense into my sister!” Carmela cried.

“Impossible,” Franco replied. “She won’t let any man in spitting distance.” He leaned against the wall of the house that flanked the steps.

Piera didn’t mirror his grin. “Carmela’s got two minutes to save us from disaster,” she huffed, stuffing Carmela’s feet into the black underskirt and yanking it up. “Turn around!” Piera ordered, spinning her to face the wall, throwing a blouse over her head, and beginning to squeeze her into the bodice.

“This dancer’s half my size,” Carmela muttered.

“Not everyone’s been blessed with your curves. Take this shawl,” Piera replied, throwing it over Carmela’s shoulders and knotting it at the base of her back, “It’ll hide the gap at the back.”

Franco stood watching. Carmela felt her cheeks flush.

Piera whipped a scarf around Carmela’s head and began fastening it at the back of her neck. Franco looked her up and down. “I’ve never liked those old-fashioned head things till now.”

About the author

Sara Alexander graduated from Hampstead School in London and went on to attend the University of Bristol, graduating with a BA hons. in Theatre, Film & TV. She followed on to complete her postgraduate diploma in acting from Drama Studio London. She has worked extensively in the theatre, film and television industries, including roles in much loved productions such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Doctor Who, and Franco Zeffirelli’s Sparrow.