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I just finished reading A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi, a romantic book that took me back to this most magical “water kingdom,” complete with sounds, smells, and sights. The story won’t appeal to everyone due to its introspection and little action, but the imagery made me long for Venice, and the exploration of the mid-life romance between two strangers, one a divorced American chef and the other a Venetian banker, was thought provoking and affirming—not to mention the actual recipes included at the end of this true love story.

Read a glimpse of the protagonist as she ponders her life: “Terror, illness, deceit, marriage, divorce, loneliness had all come to visit early enough in my life, interfering with the peace. Some of the demons just passed through, while others of them pitched tents outside my back door. And they stayed. One by one they went away, each leaving some impression of the visit that made me stronger, better. I’m thankful the gods were impatient with me, that they never waited until I was thirty or fifty or seventy-seven, that they’d had the grace to throw down the gauntlets when I was so young. Gauntlets are the stuff of every life, but when you learn, young, how to pick them up, how to work them against the demons, and, finally, how to outlast if not escape those same demons, life can seem more merciful.”

Later, as she acknowledges what she has achieved despite her fears and self-doubt, she realizes she can let it go: “The really precious parts of my life are transportable, not conditions of geography. Why shouldn’t I go to live on the fringes of an Adriatic lagoon with a blueberry-eyed stranger and leave no trail of biscotti crumbs to find my way back? My house, my fancy car, even my native country were not, by definition, me. My sanctuary, my sentimental self were veteran travelers. And they would go where I would.”