Paula Butturini’s Amazing Journey

Paula Butturini spent many years in Black Rock. She sent her friends an update about her book tour for Keeping the Feast, a memoir about the aftermath of her husband’s near-fatal shooting. She lives in Paris, but will be visiting the Black Rock Library Feb. 8, 6:30 p.m. for a discussion. Put this on your calendar! From Paula:

Greetings from gray, damp, raw but (finally) snow-free Paris,

I’ve been busy gearing up for Round 2 (or 6, depending on how you’re counting) of the Keeping the Feast book tour, and I’ll be back in the States for most of February.

The paperback edition — with a great new cover — is coming out Feb. 1, and I’m much looking forward to talking about it on Feb. 8 at 6:30 PM at one of my old childhood haunts, the Black Rock Branch Library, 2705 Fairfield Avenue, in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport. I’m grateful to Community Librarian John Soltis for setting this up, and impressed by how beautiful the library is, after a long-overdue renovation.

Many of you have come to other talks I’ve given during the last year, but I’d really appreciate it if you could pass along word of this talk to friends and family who aren’t familiar with the book. It’s a memoir that first describes my husband John’s near-fatal shooting and his subsequent descent into post traumatic stress and clinical depression, before tracing, with hope, our family’s zigzagging path back to the surface. It all revolves around food.

I’ve spent much of the past year on the road traveling through Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Texas, Missouri, Ohio, Canada, and France to talk about the book. Never thought I’d have to worry about volcanic ash threatening to get in the way of my flight to Toronto!

It’s been an utterly amazing year, with the book winning strong reviews from The New York Times, People Magazine, USA Today, Elle, as well as the national Catholic press. I’ve been lucky to be interviewed on NPR and local public radio from Minnesota to Washington, DC, as well as on Canadian television. Foreign magazines like Italy’s Grazia and Brazil’s Epoca also have written about the book, which is due to be published in Polish on May 1. I’ve spent a lot of time speaking at writers workshops in Paris, New York, Texas and Ottawa, and at universities, book stores, libraries, social clubs, and book groups.

But what’s been most surprising and gratifying has been the number of mental health organizations that have shown interest in the book. Mental health groups tied to Yale University, the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Baltimore and in northern Virginia, and the Riverdale Mental Health Association in New York, seemed intrigued by the notion of a family, wounded but hopeful, fighting to get back to normality, and using food and the family table — plus a certain amount of innate pig-headedness — to get there.

Hoping to see you or friends and family soon. And thanks in advance for passing along this invitation.

All the best,

Paula

KEEPING THE FEAST

www.paulabutturini.com