De Blasi's breathless descriptions of her improbable love affair can be cloying, but she makes up for these excesses with her enchanting accounts of Venice, especially of the markets at the Rialto. They leave Venice, he espouses her interest in food and they now direct gastronomic tours of Tuscany and Umbria. Then one day Fernando surprises her by announcing that he is quitting his job at the bank where he has worked for 26 years. She survives his criticism of her housekeeping and his displeasure at her insistence on remaining a serious cook (in modern Italy "No one bakes bread or dolci or makes pasta at home," he tells her), and they marry. Although the banker, Fernando, lives in a bunkerlike postwar condominium on the Lido rather than the Venetian palazzo of her dreams, and some of his European ideas about women clash with her American temperament, the relationship works. Louis, Mo., she agrees to return to Italy and marry him, leaving behind her grown children and her job as chef and partner in a cafe. After "the stranger" (as she coyly calls him throughout the book) pursues her back to her home in St. On a visit to Venice, de Blasi meets a local bank manager who falls in love with her at first sight.
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