Jerome W. Berryman Book order

An old Episcopal priest, who loves Florence, goes there to try to recover from the death of his wife of fifty years. He takes with him a copy of Boccaccio's Decameron and stories he has written during his life to make a book of his own. His twenty stories become part of this story, as he struggles to bind them together to make a new life. He hopes that the beauty of Florence and the making of his book will help heal his loss, but he unexpectedly meets someone with a story of her own, who has much to say about loss and love as well as the city she knows better than he. Other mentors, such as Dante, Galileo and Botticelli, join him from the past, whispering stories, who enrich the pilgrim's progress. This ten-day visit to Florence is a bit of serious but smiling play, where even the city herself becomes a teller of tales from a new life, a vita nuova.