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

Product Information

I was lucky to be experiencing a veritable European dream of culture, art, and ideas, but I was doing it through a haze of cheap Tennessee whiskey. The author of From Scratch , she lives in Los Angeles with her young daughter, but can be found each summer on the island of Sicily. Speaking to TODAY alongside her sister, the novelist Attica Locke, Tembi said that audiences are in for a love story, but not the one they may initially anticipate. Within moments, Lucia plopped herself next to me with another bottle of vin santo and that feline smile. Her parents gladly attended, arriving in full Texan gear while dancing the Harlem Shuffle at the reception.

If you’re wanting to avoid any spoilers, you are welcome to jump to the TL;DR summary at the bottom of the page if you’d prefer! My actual stars would be much lower but I feel it's unfair to judge a book just because it's a type of book I dislike.After I gathered my duffel bag from the luggage compartment of the bus, our large group was divided and shuttled off to a series of pensioni near the train station for the first night or two until we would all be assigned and delivered to our Italian host families. I’m guessing this was done on purpose since the author’s tale is really about the salve that she found in Sicily. The place was 1,200 square feet of Florentine charm packed into frescoed walls, vaulted ceilings, and fifteenth-century arches.

That first year they brought over some of Saro’s ashes, and though in each year that followed the sadness hadn’t truly dissipated, there was still, somehow, more joy in the simplicity of the Sicilian way of life, in her hard-won acceptance into a new family, and in food prepared with love. While I was in Florence, my mother was divorcing again after nearly twelve years with my stepfather. Our cheeks made a little suction sound when he pulled away, an audible marker that we had indeed touched. She pointed to a narrow set of cobblestoned stairs at the end of the dining room and promptly gave me another kiss. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro's romance – an incredible love story that leaps off the pages.It was a car I had seen only in I Vitelloni , a movie I had watched in my Italian Neorealism film class.

A nocturnal bike ride through the center of Florence on a foggy morning with an Italian chef at my side.In partnership with Hello Sunshine, Locke served as co-creator and executive producer for the adaptation of her memoir, From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home, for Netflix. She was a southern belle from SMU who wrote daily love letters to her high school sweetheart and donned gingham just for the hell of it.