ONE ITALIAN SUMMER

A 30-year-old married woman from Los Angeles, finding herself adrift after her mother’s death, travels to Italy on a long-awaited vacation they had planned to take together.

Katy Silver’s one and only true love is her mother. Her mother is—was—her first call, her last call, her everything. When Carol dies after a long illness, Katy is so overcome with grief she cannot imagine continuing her life as it was. Already on leave from work to tend to her mother, she tells her husband, Eric, that she needs space and heads to the vacation in Positano, Italy, that she and her mother had been planning. The purpose of the trip had been for Katy to see for herself the location, food, and scenery of a life-changing trip Carol had taken in her youth. Once Katy arrives at the Hotel Poseidon, she locks her wedding and engagement rings and her cellphone in the hotel room’s safe and begins to wander, experiencing the timelessness of Italy. Although in this instance, that timelessness is literal. Not long after Katy’s arrival, a younger version of Carol appears. The two strike up a friendship, and Katy leans into this unexpected—and inexplicable—time with her mother. She also leans into a potential are-they-or-aren’t-they-going-to-do-it romance with Adam, another guest at the hotel. This is a story about how Katy tries to discover who she is as a person and what she wants once she is away from her mother’s wide-ranging opinions and expertise and her husband’s love, calmness, and happiness with routine. What Katy finds is that her mother isn’t who she thought she was, but then again, neither is she.

An unconventional love story that embraces people’s flaws and selfishness as part of what makes them human.