A Thousand Days in Venice

<DIV><P>Fernando first sees Marlena across the Piazza San Marco and falls in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later he knows it is fate. He knows little English; she a divorced American chef traveling through Italy speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thought she was done with romantic love incapable of intimacy. Yet within months of their first meeting she has quit her job sold her house in St. Louis kissed her two grown sons good-bye and moved to Venice to marry the stranger as she calls Fernando. <BR />This deliciously satisfying memoir is filled with the foods and flavors of Italy and peppered with culinary observations and recipes. But the main course here is an enchanting true story about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city and finally finds the home she didn't even know she was missing.</P></DIV>