In honor of publication day for The Unfinished Angel, here is a photo of the old stone tower upon which I based the Angel's home in this book. This tower is on the campus of the TASIS school in Montagnola, Switzerland. I love this place!
Here is some of what the Angel says about the tower:
Maybe my tower. . .is not the most attractiful or the most specialty tower in Switzerland. It is just a tower, after all, like so many other towers. . .
It is a tower that stands tall and upending like a good soldier, for nearly four hundred years, not wobbling or falling down. . . There are no windows. You reach out and there is the air, just there. You are high, high above the other houses, and the only things as high are a few trees and, down the road, the tall stickly spire of the church. . .
So, maybe you might think it is nothing specialful, this tower, but to me it is the finest of all the towers in all the world. From the balcony I can see the mountains in a ring all around, a circle of mountains, and on the very top of those mountains . . .is white, white snow, and below the mountains is a blue-green lake, and above the mountains at night is a blue-black sky all pokeled with blue-white stars. From my tower, I can see all the casas in the village and I can see all the peoples coming and going. I can see all the birds flying in the air and the creatures crawling on the ground.
[Note: those aren't typos. This is the way the Angel speaks.]
