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

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. (May)