A Memoir of Loss, Escape, and Renewal
Memoir
Date Published: June 11, 2025
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
How does a young woman cope when she cannot speak the truth?
When nineteen-year-old Lenore experiences sexual assault while studying
abroad in Italy, her entire world shifts. Survival becomes the focus of her
daily life, physical illness grabs control of her body, and no one can free
her from her pain. A ghost of herself, she takes the path of denial,
believing it’s the only way to protect her loved ones and herself from
her harsh reality.
On her journey toward peace, she assumes the expected roles of mother and
wife, but a traumatic diagnosis puts her at a crossroads. She must start
living the life she wants or roam her days as a victim in the chaos of fear.
Lenore’s escape through travel allows her to reconcile the
imprisonment she’s suffered over the years.
However, when another family tragedy strikes, Lenore understands she must
finally come to terms with the silence she’s kept. But what if one
incident that happened decades ago is too destructive, too deep to be
excavated? Will she be able to find herself in the rubble? Or will she be
lost forever?
EXCERPT
Chapter 1: Innocence Adrift
I was nineteen years old and on my way to a palace.
Walking to school in my red leather boots with a broken heel, I pondered my life in Italy, entangled with emotional, sexual, and geographic complications. Running into the parishioners flowing into Perugia’s San Lorenzo Cathedral for morning Mass, I recalled how Mom and Dad had always found sustenance in their faith. Maybe I feel so sad because I never ask God for help.
Seeking solace, on an impulse, I entered the church to attend the service, though I’d be late for Italian class. Bundled up in a wool scarf and heavy coat, I entered the chilly and vast interior of the then 530-year-old Gothic cathedral under towering marble and stone arches. I joined other celebrants in a wooden pew and studied the massive altar inside a vaulted nave, illuminated by a morning sun pouring through stained-glass windows.
Within the magnificence, I muffled my gravelly coughs, got down on my knees, and began to pray. I begged God for help, please, and awaited my answer. Within the cavernous stone expanse, no answers came in the dim amid the worshippers’ echoing voices. Why did my life turn out like this? All alone and living with a wound impossible to heal?
Hunched in the church’s frigid air, I decided to skip Mass and left for school.
Later that day, I wrote a letter home in my student pension room. I longed for more compassion from my parents, but I could never reveal the ugly turn my life had taken over the past two months. Instead, I wrote about my misconception that Perugia was like my hometown of Mill Valley, California. “There are dangers,” I wrote. I want to be able to recognize the dangers.”
I also noted, “I don’t feel good, but I don’t feel like giving up and coming back. There’s too much to learn . . . about me or how I’d act in certain situations. I don’t know whether this is clear or not. I hope you can see my meaning or what I’ve been through.”
No one wrote back for clarification.
But my younger sister, Grace, picked up on something between the lines. In her letter, she wrote, “From your last letter to Mom, your tone seemed depressed about something. What is really going on with you? I really would like to know, maybe I can help. Please tell me.”
I never answered her question. I could never write down the words anyway.
***
Two months earlier, I had arrived in Perugia to study, leaving home for the first time to attend the Università Per Stranieri or the University for Foreigners. The plan was to study Italian, art, and culture for a year.
Free at last, I was learning to fly. But I didn’t have wings.
I was excited and nervous after leaving home for the first time. After landing in this Umbrian hill town, frustration knocked me. I couldn’t speak enough Italian to navigate daily life. Snotty salesgirls rolled their eyes as I stammered and searched for the right words. In restaurants, waiters presented me with a horrific slab of liver or horsemeat, and my mouth twisted in disgust before gagging. I didn’t order that, did I?
Grabbing my dictionary, I began memorizing as many words as possible.
Every day, things scrambled out of order. After opening a detergent bottle, the smell told me I had wasted money on bleach. The laundry I hung outside my window to dry in the morning became soaked by afternoon rains. I fought with ancient, poorly hung Italian doors and confusing locks, feeling lost and incompetent in a beautiful place.
Italy the infuriating. Though unacclimated to living on my own, I could easily forgive my ancestral country as the afternoon sun burnished ornate buildings into gold, as I ate luscious food, rambled on cobblestone streets, or joined the townsfolk on traffic-free Corso Vannucci.
On my first day of class, I squeezed past Fiats parked with great anarchy along Via Ulissi Rocchi. Rubbing my eyes, I had awakened too early that September morning and couldn’t dress fast enough, my hands shaking with excitement.
Amid buzzing mopeds and the Italian language filling my ears, my new leather backpack banging against my back, I swung down the narrow passage. An espresso machine hissed in a nearby café, and my nose caught the intoxicating scent of a bakery.
I wanted to soak up every fabulous thing about my new Italian life. I marveled at the simplest details—a Fiat sign, a woman heaving her market basket, the bantering school kids. And I ached, wanting to share this beauty with everyone back home.
Suddenly, a car zoomed too close, threatening to rub me against a rough stone wall—an Alfa Romeo squad car driven by a policeman. As I spun out of his way, my head just missed two dead rabbits hanging on hooks outside a butcher shop—an advertisement for today’s fresh meat. I smiled and shrugged without a care.
About the Author
Award-winning travel writer Lenore Greiner grew up in Marin County where,
at thirteen, she began her writing journey as a lifelong journal
keeper.
At nineteen, her passion for adventure led her to Italy’s heart to
study at the University for Foreigners in Perugia and immerse herself in the
language and culture. There, the seeds of her memoir were sown.
Lenore has garnered eight prestigious Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing
and was honored in Best American Travel Writing 2013, edited by Elizabeth
Gilbert. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Fodor’s
travel guides, and three volumes of Shaking the Tree, an annual anthology
curated by the International Memoir Writers
Association.
A graduate of UC Davis, Lenore married her college sweetheart, and they now
call Southern California home. They share two kids, two kayaks, and too many
rambunctious grandkids.
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