"""29. December - $1.99 - On a visit to Venice, de Blasi meets a local bank manager who falls in love with her at first sight. After """"the stranger"""" (as she coyly calls him throughout the book) pursues her back to her home in St. Louis, Mo., she agrees to return to Italy and marry him, leaving behind her grown children and her job as chef and partner in a cafe. Although the banker, Fernando, lives in a bunkerlike postwar condominium on the Lido rather than the Venetian palazzo of her dreams."""
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