From the Ground Up: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and the Journey to Home

Juan Triana: Llegó muy rápido en muy buenas condiciones,

United States on Nov 04, 2023

Long-time Mom: I really enjoyed the TV series, so I bought the book. It's enchanging, heartbreaking, and full of love.

United States on Oct 24, 2023

Andrea C Simpson: This book read like a novel. Great writing and love story. I’d recommend this book to anyone looking for inspiration and a cry at the same time.

United States on Oct 15, 2023

Claudia P.: Beautiful!

Germany on Oct 08, 2023

Jane: After watching the limited series on Netflix and learning it was based on real events, I felt compelled to read the true story of From Scratch. I was not disappointed. Tembi Locke's touching memoir of life with and loss of her husband while raising their daughter reminds us all what true love is and that it should never be taken for granted.

Australia on Oct 05, 2023

MonaD: I’m so sorry, I wanted to love this book as my hereditary is Sicilian, but I didn’t. To me this was a journal of healing and discovery. I felt so sorry for Tembe, but I just didn’t want to go so completely through her self-discovery. I loved her time with her husband, Saro, and I would have liked more of their love story.
What she wrote about them was beautiful. I guess I just didn’t want him to die. But what bothered me most was that the book went and forth between past and present. It was a little confusing to me since there was no real break in the writing. A paragraph would end in one time and the next would be the other.
I loved her family. How close they were and there’s for her. His family as well, those were the parts I liked. For me, the best parts were her time with her mother-in-law. Two women who didn’t communicate but learned to love and accept each other.
I hope Tembe keeps the home in Sicily and goes there as often as possible to be one with that town, the people, and the culture.

United States on Sep 09, 2023

Suman: I bought this book after watching the series on Netflix. And for the first time, it was hard to decide if the book is better or the series. Both are great experiences in themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the boo. Since it's a real story, the emotions leave you feeling poignant. It's very well written and a highly recommended read (The events in the book are different from the series - changed for televised purposes, I guess)

India on Jun 18, 2023

Mrs Helen Nicoletti: I absolutely loved this book.
It was such an inspiring story and truly made me appreciate the simplest things in life like the love of Saro's family in Sicily.
My own husband passed away 4 years ago now. He was half Sicilian and half Scottish and introduced me to Sicily more than 50 years ago. I grew to love it as much as my late husband and we have so many lovely friends and family there. This year will be my first visit for a few years . I would recommend this book written by a very brave woman who inspired me and told her story beautifully.

United Kingdom on Jun 03, 2023

kd26: however, for the first time I thought the web series was better than the book itself. I wished Tembi would have written more about her time with Saro but instead it is focussed on her life in Italy after he passed away. Which is interesting how the producers came up with the idea to create such a beautiful web series. I did find the book stopping a bit abruptly but otherwise it was a very nice read.

United Kingdom on May 25, 2023

Amazon Customer: Love, Loss, Family, Greif, Reinvention.

Wow – just wow! In this moving memoir Tembi Locke details the most epic type of love, while then struggling with the grief she now must endure after losing her Sicilian husband, Saro. From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home is poignant, touching, and gut-wrenching.

I am not much of a non-fiction reader, or a memoir reader for that. I like getting lost in the “fake” worlds of fiction where at the end of the book I can tell myself it wasn’t real. At times, this book completely shattered me. I was sitting at my son’s baseball game with tears pouring down my face while he was up to bat.

This book is the definition of a love story, while also demonstrating the greatest heartbreak imaginable. Cancer has affected my family, and how Locke described it as a faceless disease throughout the book really resonated with me. While reading, with tears rolling, I was amazed by how she was able to articulate how she was feeling and what her and Saro went through – and I felt it all.

From the famous Tennyson poem: “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,” I thought of this...

United States on Jan 03, 2023