ZOOM – “CONVERSATIONS WITH AUTHORS”: REBECCA SERLE, “ONE ITALIAN SUMMER”

Join us for second annual Conversations with Authors – our popular Zoom series featuring in-depth, 1-hour interviews by Adult Services Librarian Anne Crawford with popular NYT Bestselling authors – for 2023! This month’s Conversations with Authors event features Rebecca Serle, author of One Italian Summer. RSVPs are required and will close two days before this event on May 16 at 8pm. This same book will also be read and discussed by the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Library Book Lovers Book Club for which you are welcome to join! For more information about our Book Club, please visit our branch library’s web events page:  Ponte Vedra Beach Branch | St. Johns County Public Library System (sjcpls.org). If you have any questions you’d like to suggest for this author interview in our Conversations with Authors Series, please email us at sjcneref@neflin.org.

Amazon Summary for One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle:  “When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone. But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life. And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue. Rebecca Serle’s next great love story is here, and this time it’s between a mother and a daughter. With her signature “heartbreaking, redemptive, and authentic” (Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Serle has crafted a transcendent novel about how we move on after loss, and how the people we love never truly leave us.”

Please register for each Conversations with Authors Zoom event separately to receive the unique Zoom link for each event! To attend live, you’ll need a Zoom account. You can obtain a free one at www.zoom.us.  Our second annual Conversations with Authors Series – hosted by Adult Services Librarian Anne Crawford and featuring in-depth, 1-hour interviews with NYT Bestselling authors – includes the following authors and their books:  Rebecca Serle, One Italian Summer (May 2023); Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets (June 2023); Gillian McAllister, Wrong Place, Wrong Time (July 2023); and Fiona Davis, The Spectacular (August 2023).

Please call the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Library at (904) 827-6950 if you need assistance with your RSVP. This special annual series is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Library. These events will be recorded and later shared via SJCPLS’s YouTube channel. You can view last year’s Conversations with Authors Series recordings via this channel, too! Every book featured in our second annual Conversations with Authors Series, plus all the other books these authors have written, are available for checkout with your SJCPLS library card via our catalog and Overdrive.