The top five places to visit in 'The View from Lake Como'

The View from Lake Como deluxe paperback edition is out today! I always look forward to the publication of my paperbacks because I have the opportunity to share additional material: photographs, imagined interviews with the characters, guides to towns and cities, places to go and people to see. The paperback gives you another look inside the snow globe of a novel with more details that deepen the reading experience.

We are so grateful for the readers who read and enjoyed the hardcover and visited us on tour with Mike Trigiani and the Predictables. The View from Lake Como is a story about family, art, love, and, more than anything, building your own life—on your own terms—and the house that goes with it.

The paperback edition of The View from Lake Como features bonus material that you will love, including…

• Book club discussion questions

• An interview with Uncle Louie

• Recommendations for a day in Lake Como, Italy or Lake Como, New Jersey

• Photographs from my personal collection

• Recipes!

The map of Jess Capodimonte Baratta’s life takes her far from home, but she learns about who she is and what she needs when she’s no longer tethered to her hometown, Lake Como, New Jersey. A sense of wonder belongs to all of us. We’re all different in how we react and what we see when we travel. No matter where we go, we can find something that will clear the lens of how we see things and inspire our own sense of possibility.

I hope when you travel you create books of your experience with photos, drawings (although you don’t have to be Michelangelo!) and memories of conversations, meals and feelings you had on the road. I hope these locations will give you a little kickstart to mine your own creativity. One of my most precious possessions is a diary my mom kept on her first trip to Italy, and I know you have those treasures in your own homes: memories of folks who created your meals and memories of the table.

If you can’t make it to Italy but someday dream of going, here are some images and stories to stoke your dream. In the meantime, I hope you curl up with The View from Lake Como and share it with someone in your life who needs some laughs, a lot of connection, and a little escape.

Carrara, the “City of Marble”, is the ancestral home of Jess Capodimonte Baratta. Go up to the mountain where Michelangelo procured the marble to carve David. Sonia (pictured below) was our guide in the mines. Inside the mountain is just as you would imagine: cold and otherworldly. The mining went on all around us, but there were glorious grace notes on the tour. For example, the chandelier hanging in the alcove was delightful.

During Christmas 1995, the miners sheared a sheet of marble from the interior wall of the mine. When they stood back, there in the marble was the Blessed Mother holding her baby, Jesus. Now, it’s a shrine! As you travel through Italy, tucked in every corner, just as she was in my mom and grandmothers’ homes, you will find the Blessed Mother, whether she’s a statue, a painting, or a holy card propped near a mirror. It’s as if the Blessed Mother wants you to understand that she is always near, always there for you, to protect and guide.

Jess rents an apartment in the heart of the Piazza Alberica, not even knowing if she would like it. She had never lived alone but, somehow, found serenity living on the peaceful town square of Carrara. When I’m home in America writing a novel, I imagine the places in Italy where I spent my time and choose a house for my characters. I think of the place where they’d have coffee, the place where they’d buy their bread, the place where they’d work, all of it. I have to see a character living her life in a place—in detail. Jess “lived” right on the town square and drew inspiration from her perch on the terrace over the square.

It’s a surreal experience to return to Jess’ fictional home after you’ve read all about it in the novel, but there’s a sense of history and continuity in the real place. Yes, this is a fictional story, but I’m always reminded that the most engrossing novels are those rooted in truth. I hope these photographs give you some insight into how a writer absorbs the world around her and brings it to you in detail. In a small scene later in the novel, Bobby Bilancia visits Jess and tells her that he approached strangers in Carrara and asked them if they knew Jess. The people on the piazza thought that Jess was a great artist, which surprised and delighted her. She was just living her life and drawing what she saw, but it meant a great deal to her that the people had seen her—this ex-pat who came to live among them, as one of them—in the shadow of the marble quarries and mines.

One of the world’s most luxurious destinations, the Villa D’Este on Lake Como, is a dream. You don’t have to stay in the hotel, but I recommend that you do, even for a night. You deserve to sit in the lap of luxury, though there are many glorious villas and hotels to choose from. The Villa D’Este has some of the best meals, views and ambience of any place I’ve ever stayed. Rich in history and lore, you will remember walking the shoreline and the narrow path that ribbons around the lake, and of course, like every town in Italy, the local church will be filled with art that will fill up your soul. Cernobbio is a little gem. Jess visits the lake in winter and since I’m a winter lover (when most folks don’t travel), I can see the world more clearly when the trees are bare and the streets aren’t crowded.

Angelo Strazza takes Jess to midnight mass at Santa Maria Assunta e San Pietro on Christmas Eve. The Church sits in the center of Viminore di Scalve (in the province of Bergamo) with views of the alps of the Lombardy region.

This church, in particular, is personal to my family and me. This is the church where my grandfather and his brother were baptized. His mother’s family, the Albriccis, built a side altar in the church alongside other families in the town. Any place, and I mean any place on earth, where the grandfather I never met walked is sacred ground. I was welcomed into the Bonicelli family home around the corner and visited my cousins in their home. I felt the presence of my grandfather but also had a sense of a family reunited. My mom, her siblings, and her parents are all on the other side of the veil now, and his church, with all its beauty and promise of eternal life, gives me strength to keep the faith.

Enjoy a centuries-old tradition when in Siena. Truffle hunting is unique to the Tuscany region with forests known for producing white truffle, which is often hunted by trained dogs. After the excursion, the city of Siena awaits you (pictured below). The Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, or the Duomo di Siena, is the highest point of the city with artwork from Donatello, Michelangelo, and Bernini.

I include the piazza in Siena because this was the place where Jess and her friends met their guide to go truffle hunting. Jess had taken the train from Carrara north and hiked into the woods to hunt truffles. This scene was more than finding the priceless mushrooms to shear on to a delicious plate of pasta. The scene was about the unknown, the undiscovered, and how travel makes explorers out of all of us. It’s a small scene, but there is wisdom in the hunt that dramatizes Jess’ dilemma. She has to reconcile all that has been hidden, embrace the secrets kept from her, and define herself in the light of mystery. In Siena, in the light, in the mud, in the deep roots of the trees in the forests in the hills above the town, Jess discovers her ability to change—and therefore commits to a new life to become open to all that is revealed to her.

As summer nears, we will share more places, people and stories from our travels. To be an American is to hopefully be a citizen of the world, no matter your destination. Until then, we hope you enjoy traveling in The View from Lake Como.