A word to the wise: You might want to make sure you are reading ONE ITALIAN SUMMER on a full stomach. The descriptions of amazing Italian food with which Rebecca Serle peppers the pages of her new novel are bound to make your mouth water and your stomach rumble.

When 30-year-old Katy arrives in Positano, on the Amalfi Coast, she hardly has an appetite for anything, and she hasn’t had one for a long time. Her beloved mother, Carol, has recently passed away. Desperate to escape the familiar locations that remind her of her mom, Katy decides on a whim to go ahead and follow through on the Italian trip that they had planned to take when she recovered from cancer.

"ONE ITALIAN SUMMER will compel readers to reconsider their own relationships while evaluating how they relate to the people in their own lives..."

Now, of course, Carol will never recover from cancer, and Katy is heartsick and questioning everything, including her seemingly stale relationship with her husband, Eric. She isn’t sure she still wants to be married to him. All she knows is that she needs a change of scene, and she hopes that Positano, a place her mother always spoke of with such fondness, might offer her a new perspective.

As soon as she arrives there, Katy can feel herself coming back to life. The glorious scenery, the sunshine and, yes, the amazing food all combine to awaken her to new possibilities --- and the handsome American stranger she flirts with at the hotel restaurant doesn’t hurt either. However, shortly after her arrival, Katy experiences a shock. There, standing in the lobby of the hotel, is her mother. But this is Carol as she was more than three decades earlier, the last time she visited Positano.

Stunned and grateful for the chance to connect with her mom again, Katy enjoys getting to see Carol as she once was, before she became a wife and mother. This is Katy’s opportunity to recognize her mom, not in relation to herself, her father or the community they once shared, but as an independent woman with her own dreams and aspirations --- and, it turns out, her own secrets.

I hesitate to use the word “mystical” to describe Rebecca Serle’s novels since it sounds pretty insubstantial. Her books are firmly grounded in real places and experiences, even if they include elements of magic. But those mystical tropes enable Serle and, by extension, readers to amplify themes and situations, to push situations beyond what’s possible in our world but in a way that still remains deeply relevant.

ONE ITALIAN SUMMER will compel readers to reconsider their own relationships while evaluating how they relate to the people in their own lives, and how they consider themselves and others both as complex individuals and as acting within communities and families.