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GERBER, MERRILL JOAN Botticelli Blue Skies: An American in Florence
Madison, WI, University of Wisconsin Press. 2002, First Edition, First Printing. (ISBN: 0299180204) Hard Cover with dust jacket, 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. x, 288 pp. illus.; 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. Fine DJ. "When writer Merrill Joan Gerber is invited to join her husband, a history professor, as he takes a class of American college students to study in Florence, Italy, she feels terrified at the idea of leaving her comforts, her friends, and her aged mother in California. Her husband tries to assure her that her fear of Italy - and her lack of knowledge of the Italian language -0 will be offset by the discoveries of travel. 'I can't tell you exactly what will happen, but something will. And it will all be new and interesting.' Botticelli Blue Skies is the tale of a woman who readily admits to fear of travel, a fear that many experience but are embarrassed to admit. When finally she plunges into the new adventure, she describes her experiences in Florence with wit, humor, and energy. Instead of sticking to the conventional tourist path, Gerber follows her instincts. She makes discoveries without tour guides droning in her ear and reclaims the travel experience as her own, taking time to shop in a thrift shop, eat in a Chinese restaurant that serves 'Dragon chips,' make friends with her landlady who turns out to be a Countess, and visit the class of a professor at the university. She discovers a Florence that is not all museums and wine. With newfound patience and growing confidence, Gerber makes her way around Florence, Venice, and Rome. She visits famous places and discovers obscure ones - in the end embracing all that is Italian. Botticelli Blue Skies (accompanied by the author's own photographs) is an honest, lyrical, touching account of the sometimes exhausting, often threatening, but always enriching physical and emotional challenge that is travel. / Merrill Joan Gerber teaches creative writing at the California Institute of Technology. She is the author of seven novels and four volumes of short stories, including the prize-winning King of the World and The Kingdom of Brooklyn. Her most recent novels are Anna in Chains and Anna in the Afterlife, as well as a memoir, Old Mother, Little Cat: A Writer's Reflections on Her Kitten, Her Aged Mother . and Life, and a book about writing, Gut Feeling: A Writer's Truths and Minute Inventions, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press." - Publisher. Fine/Fine.
Offered for US$ 4.00 by: Left Coast Books - Book number: 016752
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