Love & Gelato

In the late spring, just weeks after her mother dies, Lina’s grandmother tells Lina that Howard Mercer is, in fact, her father and that he is looking forward to meeting her after all this time. Emotionally upset over losing her mother, Lina agrees to stay in Florence only for the summer.

When she arrives in Florence, she discovers Howard is the caretaker of a cemetery dedicated to American soldiers who died during World War II. Lina fights back the creepy vibe she gets from Howard’s home adjacent to the cemetery with its rows of simple white crosses. “It could be the setting for a zombie apocalypse movie” (10), Lina observes. Howard introduces Lina to his assistant superintendent, Sonia, a striking woman a few years older than Howard with radiant “coffee-colored” skin (11). Sonia prepares a welcome-to-Florence dinner as Lina settles into her new room. Even though the room is beautifully furnished and newly painted, Lina is uneasy as she looks out the window at the headstones in the moonlight.

Despite Florence’s unreliable internet, Lina chats with Addie, her best friend back in Seattle. Lina promises her friend she will head back home as soon as the summer is over. She hopes to live with Addie’s family for her last year in high school.

After they lose the internet connection, a jetlagged Lina cannot fall asleep. With the odd acoustics of the old caretaker’s house, Lina hears Howard and Sonia, having wine and listening to music, talking about her and how quiet she is compared to her mother. Kids in her high school thought the same thing, believing that she was “unfriendly or arrogant” (30). Overwhelmed suddenly by the thought that her mother is lost to her forever, Lina cries herself to sleep.

The next morning, Lina is awakened by two American tourists who appear at her bedroom window. They are history buffs looking for a tour of the cemetery. Howard arrives and directs them to Sonia.

Now awake, Lina, a long-distance runner at her school, decides to take a morning run. She heads out of the cemetery gates and into the countryside. One thing bothers her—how little she resembles Howard, her father. The idyllic Italian scenery is breathtaking, with “rustic-looking houses and buildings painted in soft, buttery colors” (41). When Lina returns to the cemetery, Sonia tells her that her father wants to take her to Florence for a nice dinner that night. As Lina heads to her room to shower, Sonia asks her to come by her place—she has something from her mother to give her.

When she gets to Sonia’s, Lina is surprised when Sonia gives her a journal her mother kept during her time in Florence studying photography. Sonia tells Lina that Hadley and Howard had lived together briefly in the cemetery caretaker’s house just after Howard got the job, before Hadley returned to America. Sonia says she is really not clear about all the details, but Hadley sent her the journal just weeks before she died with instructions to give it to Lina when she arrived. Lina accepts the journal but is uncertain whether she is prepared to read it.

Lina knows that her mother always kept journals and even let other people read her entries. Now Lina cracks open the journal, and the first thing she sees is an old photograph of her mother standing in front of a church with a camera slung over her shoulder. Lina closes up the journal. It’s too soon, she thinks.

That afternoon, she goes for a run and passes a field where she sees a young Italian kid practicing soccer. They make eye contact. He has deep-set brown eyes with “ridiculously” long lashes (75). The boy assumes Lina is a lost tourist looking for the American hotel. The boy introduces himself. His name is Lorenzo Ferrara, Ren for short. He tells her he is Italian on his father’s side and American on his mother’s and that attends the American International School of Florence, where Lina will go if she stays in Florence beyond the summer. Ren invites Lina to meet his mother; he says that she is starved to meet any American. They walk together and chat about sports and school. Lina tells him about her mother. He asks her how she is handling her loss. They approach Ren’s house, and Lina is struck by how it looks like the gingerbread house from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, saying, “Picture the most ridiculous house you can imagine and then add lollipops” (68).

Lina meets Ren’s mother, Odette, a ceramics artist who specializes in crafting scenes of Tuscany. Lina shares that her mother was also an artist and had studied photography briefly in Florence. Odette and Lina chat warmly. Odette tells Lina about Ren’s girlfriend named Mimi. Before Lina heads back to Howard’s, Ren, holding her hand briefly, invites her to a party the next day with some friends from the school. Lina agrees and departs with a “sparkly smile” (78).