February 11, 2019
Actress and TEDx speaker Locke movingly describes the process of grieving and finding solace during three summers in Italy after the death of her husband. As a 20-year-old college exchange student in Florence in 1990, Locke, an aspiring actress, fell in love with chef Saro. His traditional Sicilian family disapproved of their interracial relationship (she is black), yet the couple married after a two-year long-distance relationship, eventually moving to Los Angeles, where they adopted a daughter; during a trip to Sicily two years later, the families reconciled. Saro, who had been battling a rare form of cancer for a decade, died in 2010; Locke spent the next three summers in Sicily with Saro’s mother making family recipes, experiencing the close-knit community, and embracing the wisdom of generations (she cooked alongside Saro’s widowed mother, who advised her simply to “Rest, you must rest”). Locke writes of coming to recognize that love comes in many forms and that “sometimes it can look like letting go, but it can also look like never letting go.” She concludes with more than a dozen Sicilian recipes that filled her with memories of Saro. Locke’s raw and heartfelt memoir will uplift readers suffering from the loss of their own loved ones.
March 15, 2019
In her literary debut, actor and TEDx speaker Locke offers a warm memoir of romance, wrenching loss, and healing.Studying in Florence for a semester abroad, the author met Saro, a handsome Sicilian chef, whose sincerity and kindness, as well as "sultry" good looks, won her heart. "I think we could be something great," he told her, conjuring "a vision of an us and greatness so effortlessly that it suddenly seemed as right as butter on bread. I was taken aback by his boldness, his certainty." When Locke returned to college, Saro visited as often as he could, and finally he left his position, prospects, and--most wrenchingly--his family to move to the United States. They married hastily in New York with only a friend as witness; at a later celebration in Italy, though, his family refused to attend, disapproving of Saro's marrying anyone but a Sicilian--especially a black American woman. Soon the author understood why Saro put off to the last minute telling his parents that he was leaving Italy to marry. Locke's family, on the other hand, "progressive, barrier-breaking Texas black folks," were delighted--especially her father: Boisterous and gregarious, he arrived in Italy dressed "in full Texas regalia, complete with cowboy hat, denim pants, and alligator boots." Her family wholeheartedly "claimed him as their own," while Saro's family's disapproval haunted the early years of their marriage. Locke portrays their life together as otherwise idyllic: They moved from New York to Los Angeles in order to foster her acting career, and they adopted an infant daughter--until Saro's diagnosis with a rare cancer changed everything. By then, the couple's relationship with Saro's parents had thawed somewhat, and when Locke and her daughter returned to Sicily to bury Saro's ashes, they were nurtured--not only spiritually and emotionally, but with traditional, and abundant, Sicilian food. The author includes recipes at the end.A captivating story of love lost and found.
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April 1, 2019
This is a love story that starts not at the beginning but the end, with the death of actor and TED speaker Locke's husband, and it is her mesmerizing grief that pulls readers in. As a student at Wesleyan, Locke, from Houston, Texas, met Saro, a chef from Sicily nearly a dozen years older than she, while on a study-abroad adventure, and they fell in love. As she recounts with pleasure and sorrow, she was attracted to Saro because he had a gift for feeding not only people's bodies but also their spirits. After the chef moves to Los Angeles, they marry. His parents initially shun Locke, strongly objecting to their son marrying an African American and an actress; they even refuse to attend their wedding. Locke and Saro have a daughter and conduct successful careers, and finally the families are brought together by the tragedy of Saro's cancer. Readers will not want to put Locke's memoir down, so compellingly does she describe her unique experiences and the universal ups and downs of life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)