returning to Florence, Italy, with April Lindner's LOVE, LUCY

Today, with her vivid reimagining of EM Forster's A Room With a View in a YA novel she titled Love, Lucy, April Lindner has returned me to that city of art—Florence, Italy. She has given me Lucy, torn between two cities and two boys, a father's demands and her own instincts. She has taken me to Fiesole, a village outside Florence where I traveled many years ago—a town that, in fact, became the setting of my favorite published short story.

It's all so clear, in April's book. I see the streets as if I am walking them, the red-tiled roofs as if I am up above them, that Arno as if I am Vespa-ing by.

And that first photo in this post, right down to the red bike, is a picture I took in back in September 2012, when I was researching my own Florence novel, One Thing Stolen. That precise scene and angle, right down to the the red bike, is pictured on the back of April's novel.

We wrote our Italy novels at the same time. Worried them through together. Gave each other the support novelists need. Indulged in all flavors of gelato.

And so, April, it was a pleasure this afternoon to read your story, to find your gelato, your streets, your romance, and, of course, your music, in the pages of Love, Lucy. Congratulations on another wonderful reimagining.

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One Thing Stolen in a storefront in Florence, Italy, where it all began

A happy sight this morning—an image of One Thing Stolen in the window of Paperback Exchange, the Anglo-American bookstore in Florence, Italy, where some of the original research for this book took place in the form of interviews with the shop's owners, Maurizio Panichi and Emily Rosner. 

I had gone to the shop in October 2012 in order to write a story titled "Florence's Timeless Bookstore for Expats and Travelers" (Publishing Perspectives). I soon found myself engaged in a conversation about the 1966 flooding of the Arno and the work of the Mud Angels, for Maurizio had played an important role during that terrifying time. Soon thereafter Emily and I became friends. Emily answered questions about Italian and about history as I worked through many drafts. She told me tales about her life. And she was one of the very first readers of this book, sending me a series of encouraging notes while I was traveling by train—just when I needed them most.

Today Emily posted this picture on Facebook. I'm stealing it for my blog, in Nadia fashion.

Thank you, Emily. For all of it.

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Walking West Philly with Lori Waselchuk and Writing ONE THING STOLEN, in this Sunday's Inquirer

Philadelphia Inquirer editor Kevin Ferris and I have been working together through many columns now, and I am always—always—grateful for his generosity. He has a huge heart. He allows me to write from mine. I'm neither a journalist nor an academic, and I'll never be famous. Kevin doesn't mind.

This month I wanted to celebrate West Philadelphia, where part of my new novel, One Thing Stolen (Chronicle Books), is rooted (much of the book also takes place in Philadelphia's sister city, Florence, Italy). I wanted to return to those images and places that inspired scenes in the book—and to Lori Waselchuk, a West Philadelphian who walked me through those streets two years ago to help me see them with insiderly eyes.

Lori is both a maker of art and a promoter of it. She is the force, for example, behind Ci-Lines, about which I wrote on this blog a few days ago.

To Kevin, who lets me love out loud, and to Lori, who gave me ideas that kept me writing forward, thank you. A note of thanks here, as well, to Hassen Saker, who offered kindness this week, and to Anna Badkhen, whose work inspired this blog a few days ago.

The link to this story is now live, here.

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In today's HuffPo: writing toward fear, as I wrote toward One Thing Stolen

 

I have made reference to the challenges that beset me (self-afflicted, surely) as I set out to write One Thing Stolen. Today, in Huffington Post, I'm write of the fears I was writing toward during the process.

The piece begins like this, below, and carries forward here.

There is a girl who only just recently knew who she was, what she wanted, the dimensions of now. A girl who has a retro-minded best friend and a reputation for ingenious ideas about night snow, urban gardens, and the songs that rise up from Philadelphia streets. She has a mother and a brother, both loved. She has a father obsessed with the Florentine flood of November 1966--that unforeseen spill of the Arno River, that mud that clawed through homes and stores and across the face of Cimabue's "Crucifix," among so many other treasures. This girl has moved with her family to Florence. This girl is losing herself.

It's hard to say, precisely, when she began to peel away. When an obsession with nests and nest building became her terrible secret. When thieving erupted as a necessary part of her existence. When words began to clot and clog and answers became elusive.

It's hard to say when all this started. It's impossible to know how it will end.

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we can only write toward our obsessions

A photograph taken in the Santa Croce Cathedral, October 2012, while researching the book that would become One Thing Stolen.

To the left, the mosaics of colored glass tell us stories, suggest a beginning or an end.

To the right, no colors, no stories, just a little framing and the blast of temporal sun. My story, the one I was writing, lived somewhere in there. Still amorphous, still radically strange, but beckoning. It hurt to look at it. I could not stop looking at it. It suffered itself into being.

I suffered, too.

Now, less than two months from the book's launch date, I ponder this strange existence of wading through the formidable dark toward a fledging, heartbreaking story, while thinking not at all about what the market will actually bear. What is the category? What is the tagline? What is the label? This book has none. I have flirted with doom. And persisted.

Why?

Because we can only write toward our obsessions.

Because we must be who we are.

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And then A.S. King read One Thing Stolen

It took a long time and a lot of heartache to find my way through One Thing Stolen. I had an idea about vanishing and effacement. I am obsessed with birds and floods. I sometimes misplace things, especially names, and I have, therefore, a growing obsession with the mind and where it puts the things that once were.

I also have students I love. And I believe that language is plastic, that it must be taken apart and put back together again so that it might remain alive, so that our stories might live, too.

All of this became the web of the book called One Thing Stolen, and by the time I had finished it for real and taken the first 100 pages apart yet again— nanoseconds before it went off to the copy editor—I was in a quiet place. Bewildered by—and grateful to—the strange workings of the literary imagination.

I sought no blurbs for the book. It was going out there, bravely, on its own.

Two nights ago, a friend alerted me to some goings-on on Twitter. Did you see what A.S. King has written about One Thing Stolen? the friend asked. What I found there, on the Twitter stream, made me cry. It kept me up through most the night. An act of friendship so remarkable. Words I needed to hear.

When I wrote to thank Amy for her generosity, she offered to write a blurb for the book. Really? I said. Really, she said. Or something like that. She wrote not one, but two, and because I like them both so much I will share them here. These words will appear on reprint editions of One Thing Stolen (for the book has already gone to press) and everywhere else, starting now.

Grateful doesn't begin to describe it. Thank you, A.S. King.

Kephart at her poetic and powerful best. ONE THING STOLEN is a masterwork—a nest of beauty and loss, a flood of passion so sweet one can taste it. This is no ordinary book. It fits into no box. It is its own box—its own language.

ONE THING STOLEN is a tapestry of family, friendship, Florence, and neuroscience. I’ve never read anything like it. Kephart brings the reader so deep inside Nadia we can feel her breathe, and yet her story leaves us without breath.

 A.S. King is the author of Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, Reality Boy, Ask the Passengers, Everybody Sees the Ants, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, and The Dust of 100 Dogs

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One Thing Stolen: teacher's guide (a first glimpse)

Once again, the Chronicle team has done an exquisite job of creating a teacher's guide.

This time the guide was created in support of One Thing Stolen, a story about dangerous obsessions, an Italian city, an historic flood, and hope, due out in April 2015 (more on the book here). We'll be posting a live link soon. This, above, is just a fragment. It moves me deeply to think of someone giving a book such close attention, pondering its heart and lessons, and crafting (and designing) a guide this lovely.

The teacher's guide to Going Over, another Chronicle masterpiece, can be found here.

Thank you, Jaime Wong and Chronicle Books.

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What Florence is to you (and the winner of One Thing Stolen)

I asked readers of this blog to tell me something about the way they think of or remember Florence. What is that building, that bit of landscape, that dish, that way of walking, that weather that is Florence to you?

On my blog and over Facebook they answered—so many lovely responses that I find myself simply wanting to list them here. To you, to those who stopped by, Florence is (in part):

The trip Florinda and her art major husband will take to Italy before this decade is through.

That moment when Sandra Bullock says, in "While You Were Sleeping," "And there would be a stamp in my passport and it would say Italy on it."

A statue of Bacchus.

The stories Hilary's backpacking sister would tell.

The cement slab that sloped down toward the river.

The smell of leathergoods shops on the Ponte Vecchio.

Florence and the Machine.

A woman named Florence who helped Lisa feel hopeful about staying intellectually engaged at any age (and being kind while you are at it).

Outdoor cafes and hot waiters who are working to pay for their art.

The Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi Gallery, the Duomo, a city close to the city where George Clooney got married.

Two small gold rings.

An art history class.

Renaissance art.

The nearby beaches.

The similarities between the Arno and the Schuylkill (woman after my own heart, that Victoria Marie Lees)

A mother, now gone, who lived the dream of traveling Italy.

(And so much more.)

This morning I've asked my sleepy husband to give me a number (each entry had a number). His number correlates with Amy, who said that Florence is, to her, the cement slab that sloped down toward the river (and where she wrote in her journal).

Amy, I can't tell you how cool it is that you have been randomly selected, for a very major scene in One Thing Stolen takes place on that very cement slab. Please send along your mailing address so that I can send you a copy of the book.

Looking forward to seeing my Chronicle friends and the teachers of NCTE (and wonderful, intelligent, blessing-of-a-friend Debbie Levy!!!!!!) next Friday/Saturday in Washington, DC, where more copies of One Thing Stolen will be shared. I'll be at the Chronicle Booth at 3 PM on Friday.

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ONE THING STOLEN: a single copy available to a U.S. reader

I have a single copy of ONE THING STOLEN, my novel about an impossible obsession set against the backdrop of Florence, Italy, available to a U.S. reader.

I invite those who are interested to leave a comment indicating one thing you most associate with Florence—a building, a landscape feature, an icon, a dish, a way of walking, a kind of weather, anything. I will then attempt to write a blog post referencing every single comment.

(I anticipate a mean mind twister.)

The winner will be randomly chosen on November 15th.

Perhaps you wonder why I have just one copy to give away? The answer is that I've been busy creating packages for the many people who helped make this book a reality.

Dr. Bruce Miller, for example, of the University of California-San Francisco Memory and Aging Center, who shed light on the disease that my young Nadia faces.

Emily Rosner and Maurizio Panichi, whom I met in the Florence bookstore, Paperback Exchange, and who helped me understand the 1966 flooding of the Arno and the Mud Angels who came to the rescue; Maurizio's own experiences are woven through this story.

Laura Gori, who directs the Scuola del Cuoio, and where I learned the art of leather working from a master.

Mike Cola, a dear friend and Renaissance man, who talked to me about birds.

Kathy Coffey, who sent, through the mail, the book that I needed, following her own trip to Florence.

My brother-in-law, Mario, who helped me with translations.

Wendy Robards, who read early on and kept me grounded.

My students Katie Goldrath and Maggie Ercolani, who deeply inspired me.

And a few others.

Leaving me with one galley for posterity's sake and one for one of you.

I hope you'll let me know of your interest.

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One Thing Stolen, the Florence novel, has a PW moment

So grateful to have ONE THING STOLEN included in this Spring 2015 Children's Sneak Previews from Publishers Weekly:

CHRONICLE

Chronicle channels the Force for Star Wars Short and Sweet: A New Hope by Jack and Holman Wang, a 12-word retelling; I Wish You More by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illus. by Tom Lichtenheld, celebrating everyday moments of abundance; The Water and the Wild by Kathryn Elise Ormsbee, a fantasy debut featuring a portal in a bejeweled tree; One Thing Stolen by Beth Kephart, about a girl who develops strange behaviors when she moves with her professor father to Italy for six months; and Vanishing Girl by Elena Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle, a mother-daughter memoir featuring daughter Elena’s struggle with anorexia.

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That Florence, Italy, novel: the title, the synopsis

Next spring, Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books will be releasing a novel set in Florence, Italy, and (to a lesser extent) West Philadelphia. It took me a long time, and many drafts, to get it right, and it is only recently that we have settled on a final title.

I share that here, with an early book description:

Something is just not right with Nadia Cara. She’s become a thief, for one thing. She has secrets she can’t tell. She knows what she thinks, but when she tries to speak, the words seem far away. Now in Florence, Italy, with a Master Chef wanna-be brother, a professor father, and a mother who specializes in at-risk teens, Nadia finds herself trapped by her own obsessions and following the trail of an elusive Italian boy—a flower thief—whom no one else has ever seen.  While her father tries to write the definitive history of the 1966 flood that threatened to destroy Florence, Nadia wonders if she herself will disappear—or if she can be rescued, too.

Set against the backdrop of a glimmering city, ONE THING STOLEN is an exploration of obsession, art, and a rare neurological disorder. It is a story about the ferocious, gorgeous madness of rivers and birds. It is about surviving in a place that, fifty years ago, was rescued by uncommon heroes known as Mud Angels. It is about art and language, imagining and knowing, and the deep salvation of love written by an author who is herself obsessed with the beguiling and slippery seduction of both wings and words.  

My students Katie Goldrath, Maggie Ercolani, and Stephanie Cara inspired me as I wrote. Emily Sue Rosner and Mario Sulit helped me get the Italian right. Alyson Hagy, Amy Sarig King, and Kelly Simmons kept me going. Patty McCormick and Ruta Sepetys listened. Lori Waselchuk gave me her West Philadelphia. Wendy Robards gave so much of her time and heart during desperate days. And Tamra Tuller stood by.

Always grateful.

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Mud Angels, the Florence novel, is copy-editing bound

Sometimes the books come easy. Sometimes the books come hard. It is necessary, in the end, to believe in them.

After 18 months of work on a novel called Mud Angels, I believe. I'm one final read away from relinquishing the book to copy editing. Tamra Tuller, my Chronicle Books editor, had to read this book many times. She had to find ways to tell me to return to the pages, had to wait, had to (I'm sure) hold her breath.

We're breathing now, both of us. Nadia Cara, my heroine, is finally fully alive and real. Her story—of battling a rare neurological disorder while living in a borrowed apartment off of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy—echoes through time, as stories must. Her secrets are rooted.

We don't give up because we can't give up. Because if we do, we will not learn all the lessons challenges set down for us. We will not know if we are big enough. We will not know if we are patient enough. We will not know what might have been. I learned the importance of persevering, again, with Mud Angels.

Chronicle Books will be releasing this novel in the spring of 2015.

I'm about to begin the writing of something new.

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At the Scuola del Cuoio, in Florence, Italy

When the days go all hurrying by, like they do, when I wonder if I've ever actually stood up and walked away from this desk in the last, say, months or years, I play a little game with myself.

Where was I this time last year?

The answer this time is Florence, Italy, at the Scuola del Cuoio, in the bowels of the Santa Croce Cathedral, where I was learning how to make a leather book from one of the masters of the craft.

There he is, toward the end of our process. And here the book is today, on my desk, with my certificate.

It makes me happy to remember.

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the writer's life is all here, in the making

Here, on my desk, the notes I have made for the final seven scenes in the Florence, Italy, novel.

Seven scenes is a large number and I refuse to write fast; there's too much pleasure to be found in writing slow—in taking the time to look around, in stopping to live in the thick stew of it all, in feeling deeply, in walking to the end of that alley.

I am a writer because I love to write, because—for my own psyche—I have to. This writing—this right now, this work that comes after a year of self doubt and tossed pages, certainty of failure, little cracks of light, a sudden knowing—this is the thing.

The writer's life is all here, in the making. It's what we teach ourselves about words, faith, perseverance, about the collisions that become story.

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we writers are not down in the earth,

in the hurt of a mine. We are not shucking for treasures in the sea. We are not carrying boulders up the prickly side of Everest. We are not curing a broken vessel in a brain.

Still, writing is what we do, and the work becomes physical at times, wearying in its own strange ways. We sit down to it, and it runs away. We return to the words we thought we'd polished, and we delete delete delete, start a new page.

We despair. Oh. Have I. Ever.

But today I let my thoughts descend to the underworld of Santa Croce Cathedral in Florence, Italy, and found the piece of the story I'd been missing all along—the piece that at long last surprises and exhilarates me.

I can't write unless the work somehow surprises and therefore enlivens me.

I sit with a straighter back.

I reach for a cup of tea.

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the most stubborn writer alive

"You should just skip that part," my husband says.

"I can't. You know I can't. I'm not like that."

"You should try," he says, "because you're driving yourself crazy."

"I know," I say. "But I can't."

Why is it that I work this way, I wonder—incapable of writing forward when the scene I've been working on fails? Incapable of believing that I'll get it right some time. Now is the time, and now I am failing. The failure of the scene is the failure of the book until—unless—I get it right.

I'll be crazy between now and then.

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In preparation for my upcoming Radnor Memorial Library talk I look back and find

...the very first page of the very first notes I ever took, for my very first writing workshop.  I was a mother already.  I was way too old to be a newbie.  But there I was in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1994, and there, before me, stood Reginald Gibbons and Rosellen Brown.  In two too-short weeks they taught me most everything I still know about the making of stories. 

I'll be reflecting on the idiosyncratic evolution of this writer's life, among other things, at the Radnor Memorial Library, November 16th, 7:30.  I hope you'll join me. 

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