Title: Sardinian Silver
Author:  A. Colin Wright
Publisher: Toplink Publishing
ISBN: 978-1947938830
Pages: 200
Genre: Adult Fiction/Travel
Reviewed by: Jessica Schmidt

Awarded to books of excellent Merit

Sardinian Silver is a mixture of historical fiction, romance and a relatable coming of age story. Author A. Colin Wright treats the reader to stories of a young man’s escapades working as a foreigner in a remote part of Italy. He paints beautiful scenes of Sardinia and surrounding areas, capturing the highs and lows of navigating a foreign country as a young man hungry for love and adventure. The writing is truly delightful and full of descriptions the reader can easily visualize. The first image that stayed with me throughout the book is his description of his bedroom ceiling in Sardinia: “a magnificent blue, with yellow and red stars and a number of plump angels floating ponderously across it, with vegetation entwined around the edges.”

This book captures an interesting part of Italy which was relatively unknown when the main character is sent there for work as a young, free-spirited man full of charm and a lusty appetite. There are many explicit scenes woven into his experiences, which make this best for adults and young adults. Sardinian Silver would appeal to anyone who has traveled abroad for work or school, as well as adventure seeking readers who enjoy traveling back in time to a simpler age when correspondence was done exclusively through hand written letters and communication across cultures was in many ways more interesting and more challenging.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Sardinian Silver because from the first page, I was transported back to my own youthful travels abroad. I recalled my own experiences working in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language and the customs seemed very strange; where I stuck out like a sore thumb and created ample fodder for criticism and gossip among the residents. I could relate to the character’s youthful attempts at finding love and appreciated his thoughtful inner dialog and the author’s excellent writing and storytelling. I learned about Sardinia, of which I was not knowledgeable about and enjoyed some “arm-chair traveling” as I paged this book. I appreciated the author’s skill at keeping my interest and unveiling the interesting line between fact and fiction as the novel concluded.

I recommend this book to young adults considering a study abroad experience during their university years. This is also a good book to read for others like me, who have traveled and lived abroad in their youth and later reflect on their experiences and marvel at the circular nature of life and the clarity which comes with living one’s daily life and trying to gain wisdom along the way.

Sardinian Silver is an apt title for this book that takes the reader on an interesting and thought provoking journey through the eyes of a young man whose first introduction into a new culture is a friendship which develops and changes throughout the book and plays into the complex, heart wrenching love triangle – impacting the main character throughout the rest of his life as he reflects on it years later. Although the story contains old world charm and transports the reader back to an earlier time in history when life was very different, the universal trials and tribulations of youthful passion and self-absorption still ring true.