Losing Venice

Surrounded by beauty can you learn to live beautifully? Travel marketing executive Mark Vandermar leads an itinerant life. Elsewhere is where he calls home so its no surprise when hes called to Venice to help craft the Venice Tourism Councils new campaign to attract skittish post-September 11 American tourism dollars. As he gets to know Venices colorful campos and canals his relationship with Venice grows more complex and its fascinating history both influences him and becomes a mirror reflecting the turbulence of the early twenty first century. In addition to Venice Marks journey of discovery unfolds among some of Europes most captivating locales including Prague Budapest and the Greek islands where he encounters a cast of compelling characters that lead to life-changing consequences. The geography of his new life is marked with discovery and reinvention but what he really seeks is to learn to live beautifully to find a place and a person to call home.Like the finest expatriate novels Losing Venice is as richly textured as its fabled locales and dives deeply into the possibilities perils and pleasures of learning how not to be lost. If youve ever wondered why people still write novels reading Stavrous Losing Venice might answer your question. This funny poignant account of failure that turns to success is not a perfect novel but a beautiful one. It captures a moment and place that though in the recent past seems as distant as Hemingways Paris and as important. A reminder of what the business of literature of living is. All lovers of the art of writing and romance should read it. George Crane best-selling author of Bones of the Master and Beyond the House of the False Lama