The Girl in the Italian Bakery

The Girl in the Italian Bakery Review

Life didnt do Kenny Tingle any favors. In The Girl in the Italian Bakery, follow his journey from childhood in a tough housing project north of Boston, the abduction and disappearance of a childhood friend, to the complete destruction of a family. His introduction to crime and the years he spent in foster homes. The poor choices he made in high school and the startling climax on prom night. Although he never has trouble meeting girls, the one girl he longs for always seems out of reach. The Girl in the Italian Bakery is the remarkably true story of always keeping hope, even when there is little left to hope for. This is a story of surviving through extreme adversity, and, ultimately, redemption.

Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love

Marcus of Umbria: What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love Review

People magazine calls Marcus of Umbria“charming”; Marley & Me author John Grogan proclaims that Justine van der Leun “is blessed with the elusive gift of storytelling”; Like Water for Elephants author Sara Gruen calls the book “warm, comic, and beautifully descriptive. I devoured this compassionate and sharply funny book in one sitting.”

 

Readers will delight in this tale of an urbanite who leaves her magazine job to move to Collelungo,
Italy, population: 200. There, in the ancient city center of a historic Umbrian village, she sets up house
with the enticing local gardener she met on vacation only weeks earlier. This impulsive decision launches an eye-opening series of misadventures when village life and romance turn out to be radically different from what she had imagined.

Love lost with the gardener is found instead with Marcus, an abandoned English pointer that she
rescues. With Marcus by her side, Justine discovers the bliss and hardship of living in the countryside:
herding sheep, tending to wild horses, picking olives with her adopted Italian family, and trying her best to learn the regional dialect. The result is a rich, comic, and unconventional portrait about learning to live and love in the most unexpected ways.