STRANGER THAN FICTION

It's 1993, and a middle-aged American woman - a chef and food-writer - is in Venice with friends, lunching in a cafe near their hotel. The waiter calls her to the phone, where a deep-voiced stranger tells her that it is imperative that they meet. She realizes it must be the gentleman she caught staring at her earlier, there in the cafe. She politely says thank you, but no. Four days in a row she says no thank you. Finally, on the fifth - her last day in Venice - she agrees to meet with him.

They spend a few hours walking the city together, barely able to converse in a mixture of broken English and Italian. He asks her if she believes in destiny. It seems he had spotted her in a piazza, on one of her previous visits to Venice. He had wanted to follow her, to talk to her, but she was with another man. He lost his nerve, let her go. And now, a year later, he glances up from his lunch, and there she is! She tells him this is coincidence, not destiny. And yet, a few hours later, they have exchanged addresses, and a kiss. Eighteen days later, he arrives in America for a visit, by the end of which, she has agreed to close up her life in America, sell her home and cafe, and return to Italy to marry this blue-eyed Venetian.

If I have piqued your curiosity, and you wish to know more of this stranger-than-fiction, true-life tale, you know what to do! Just leave a comment here, any time between now and Monday night, and you will be entered in a drawing for Marlena de Blasi's amazing memoir, A Thousand Days In Venice: An Unexpected Romance, as well as a journal and a pound of locally roasted coffee.