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Book Review: From Scratch, by Tembe Locke
Summary
From Scratch chronicles the summers following the loss of author Tembi Locke’s husband. Tembi is a black American woman from Texas. She and her daughter Zoela travel back to the small Sicilian town where her husband Saro grew up. The story shows Tembi and Zoela navigating through life without Saro as well as life in the Sicilian countryside. The reader is often transported back through time to get an understanding of Tembi and Saro’s love.
Tembi met and fell in love with Saro while they were living in Florence Italy. Saro was a professional chef and Tembi was a student on an exchange program. After falling in love, Saro and Tembi moved to Los Angeles so Tembi could pursue her acting career. Early in the book, Saro is diagnosed with cancer. The story bounces between Tembi and Saro’s early life in Florence, to their life in Los Angeles, to life in the small Sicilian town of Aliminusa.
During her period of mourning, Tembi is faced with many challenges. She and Zoela end up learning and growing a lot over their summers spent in Saro’s hometown. They learn how to live without Saro while also honoring his life and heritage.
Review
Tembi Locke bares her soul in this moving tribute to the love she found, lost, and found again. She takes us on her journey of grief, while giving us snippets of her history as it applies. Locke’s writing is smooth, heartfelt, and filled with personal emotion. She has a way of taking a very heavy and sad topic and making the reader feel so full of love while reading it.
The book deals heavily with grief. It also focuses on the relationship between Tembi and her daughter as they both attempt to move on from the loss of their husband and father, respectively. Locke shows the challenge to be a supportive parent while also feeling like she is falling apart. The bond that Tembi and Zoela develop is very real.
The book also showcases Tembi’s journey into a familiar life in a small Sicilian town. Tembi reveals her struggles to develop a relationship with her mother-in-law. The journey is peppered with food and customs of Sicily and shows how important it is for a foreigner to embrace tradition. Food is a big part of this book, but it is done in a way that makes sense.
The coincidence of a chance meeting in Florence had fated me to stand here decades later, thousands of miles from my home of origin but simultaneously in a home I had chosen, tasting my first flavors of renewal. – Tembi Locke, From Scratch