The realtor can only push open the massive wooden doors to the apartment and invite me to lean into the debris. Save a few skeletal boards, there is no floor. The walls are bared to medieval bricks. Where a chandelier once hung, a rusted, hand-wrought iron chain swings from an 18-foot, frescoed vault like a hangman’s rope. With a tempestuous calculation of its potential, I say to the realtor, ‘I’ll take it’ before Fernando has even climbed the stairs.

After two years in their barely comfortable stable in San Casciano, Marlena and Fernando de Blasi know it’s time to move on. They are looking for a home in which to set a sumptuous table and, in Orvieto, they find it. The town is known as La Divina, the Divine, for its abundance of treasures but it’s the friendships Marlena and Fernando make that bring richness to their lives. They learn that Orvieto offers life in its most embraceable form: love, work, food and wine - these are the most important things.

The third book in the trilogy of Marlena and Fernando’s romance, which began with A Thousand Days in Venice and Tuscan Secrets, An Umbrian Love Story continues Marlena’s passionate love affair with Fernando, with Italy, and with food, as she befriends the local aristocracy, the cooks and the artisan makers of mouth-watering breads, cheeses, wine and pastries as well as the shopkeepers, farmers and shepherds, each of whom brings a gift to the table and to the story. Each is part of the simple, sometimes chaotic, often celebratory daily life Marlena creates in Orvieto.