Teaser Tuesday - American Girl Falls for an Italian--Dog

My Teaser Tuesday read for this week is a classic story with a twist. American girl flees the glamour and excitement of New York City and lands in the Italian countryside where she finds love. Only in this story her love is a five year old Italian-born English pointer named Marcus.

Teaser Tuesday is a bookish meme hosted by Miz B over at Should be Reading and is open to all readers who enjoy sharing their current book. Rules of the game are simple:

--open your current read to a random page;
--share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on the page, being careful not to give away too much of the story;
--share the title and author and, if you like, a brief synopsis so other readers can decide if they want to add your selection to their TBR lists; and
--post your link in the comments on Miz B's webpage before checking out other Teaser Tuesday links.

MARCUS of UMBRIA
What an Italian Dog Taught an American Girl about Love
by Justine van der Leun

"For a long time, without even knowing it, I had envisioned a perfect, fictional love in which two people came together , forever devoted only to one another . . . When I think about it now, this grand love for which I toured the earth could be found most easily not between a man and a woman but between a doting owner and her loyal dog." p. 70

Synopsis: in Justine van der Leun's memoir she writes about her impulsive decision to leave her job with an American magazine in New York and move to Italy to live a more adventurous life. She falls--or thinks she does--in love with a handsome gardener and moves in with him in the Umbrian town of Collelungo, population 200. She does not adjust well to Italian country life.

Then she rescues an abandoned English pointer on her boyfriend's family farm. She named the dog Marcus and kept that name when, on closer examination, she found that Marcus was a "girl'. With Marcus as her constant companion she gradually learns how to live the country life with all its roughness and charm. Marcus and Justine save each other.

I loved this memoir because it wasn't the expected account of a traveler in Italy seen through a terra cotta haze. It is honest and revealing. But mostly it is just the story of a girl and her dog.

(Photo credit: jvanderleun.com)