From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

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I have realized that anytime we write about an experience, it changes our memory of the experience. In writing From Scratch, I had to make sense of events and experiences that I once saw as separate. Drawing a line from one set of events to another, I saw connections that were previously hidden to me. Writing the book gave me the gift of perspective. Lino declares his love for Amy just before she leaves Italy for LA, and the couple become inseparable.

How does Zoela both comfort and challenge Tembi after Saro’s death? Did Tembi’s description of parenting through grief surprise you in any way? Unlike them, I wasn’t in Italy to shop and hang out with my sorority sisters. I didn’t have my parents’ credit card in my wallet, and I wasn’t looking for a tryst with an Italian boy and trips to Paris once a month. I had a semester’s worth of modest spending money, and I actually wanted to study art history. There was more I wanted, too, from my three-month stay. It was a yearning I couldn’t put into words yet.

Once in the narrow entrance, I made my way up to the hostess. Saro had told me to ask for her, Lucia. “ Mi scusi.” She looked up, took one glance at me, and sprang from behind her station at the end of the dessert bar. The smile on her face resembled that of a cat, after eating the canary. Two months later, Sloane found me scrubbing the toilet in her bar, No Entry. It was in the heart of Florence’s historic center, near Piazza Santa Croce and a stone’s throw from the Arno. As was typical, she had dropped by in the afternoon and found me, scrub brush in hand, Billie Holiday mix tape on the boom box. My friend had by then become my boss, so I was cleaning the place. Despite my early promises of discipline, in six weeks I had blown through a semester’s worth of spending cash. It had disappeared in the form of belts, purses, dinners, and weekend trips to Rome and Stromboli. I was broke but refused to ask my parents for more. As a result, I cleaned toilets at No Entry off the books, before or after my classes. Amy leaves her home in Texas and halts her law degree to pursue her passion for art, which takes her to Florence, Italy for a semester. Eccola, Tembi! Un’amica americana.” Then she gave me a dramatic kiss on the cheek, pivoted, and left me. Were people doing tiny lines of coke off a farmhouse coffee table? Keith David takes on the role of Zoe’s on-screen father, Hershel Wheeler, Danielle Deadwyler as Zoe’s on-screen sister Maxine.

But it was Aubrey who could see Saro’s love on view in plain sight. Later, after a walk through Florence, an afternoon of window browsing, and then dinner, she told my dad, “And don’t even think about objecting to their age difference. You and I are also twelve years apart. It’s plain as day how he feels, you do not have to worry about this.” She shot down any lingering doubt, assuaging my father’s concerns. Aubrey was Saro’s ambassador into my clan.I think she has slept with him.” Caroline had finally arrived, and Lindsey was getting her up to speed moments later while we settled into our corner table downstairs in the cantina. I wanted to know what will become of the people, places, and things that have meant something to me. I wanted to learn something new from someone I have yet to meet. And I wanted to be able to know that I could see unspeakable pain and know that it, too, would change me but not undo me. I wanted to journey to beyond where my eye can see and greet the self who carried me forward to get there.” Saro was watching over us as Robert made vows to Zoela. Our family friend Coline Creuzot serenaded us and friends brought over flowers and left them on our porch. When all was said and done, we drove around the neighborhood making old-fashioned, joyous noise with string and tomato sauce cans dragging behind us. Zoela made our 'Just Married' sign. It was perfect!" From Scratch: Book to screen adaptation Do we get a menu?” Lindsey asked as she saw a waiter bring an armful of platters to a nearby table. The Sicilian landscape—Tembi’s “stone inheritance”—is a character in its own right in this memoir. Discuss how the natural surroundings both reflect and contradict her emotions at various points in her story.