“Glen Vecchione offers the reader an exuberant, gracefully written account of a time when he stepped away from his life as an aging gay Italian man in a changing America and began the complex process of creating an eagerly anticipated future in Italy. He invites us to accompany him as he navigates the emotional, financial, practical, and linguistic labyrinth of details and choices that form the narrative bridge he elegantly constructs, then crosses to begin his new life. Bravo! Let these pages be an invitation for all of us who have the courage to imagine and manifest our next chapters.”

—Sandra Butler, author of Leaving Home at 83 and Now What? Notes from the Frontlines of Old Age

“In his sixties, “a senior on the path to increasing seniority,” Glen P. Vecchione set out, courageously and a bit naïvely, to start a new life in Italy. “First you explore, then you make friends, then you fall in love,” an Italian friend told him. And fall in love, Vecchione did, as he vividly illustrates in this charming and beautifully written memoir. Buying a house in Umbria, the green heart of Italy, and seeking to get Italian citizenship embroiled him in a preposterous pile-up of bureaucratic regulations, red tape, and some hilarious linguistic blunders. With a cast of quirky, lovable characters, the memoir moves along with all the drama, incident and suspense of a novel. An utterly engaging story.”

—Philip Gambone, author of the forthcoming Considerable Women: An Italian American Matriarchy