Praise for Portofino

"The wonderful thing about this book is that it feels like a vacation...And, like a really good vacation, it ends too soon."

--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Absolutely charming...makes you smile and give a lift to the human spirit"

--Chattanooga Times

"Frank Schaeffer has a strange and singular story to tell, and he tells it with happy assurance. It's impossible not to love it."

--Alan Dumas, Rocky Mountain News, August 10, 1997

"A sweet-natured, comic tale... Good material"

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1997

....Mom handed me the postcard.

"I wish she'd be less flippant. Maybe this year the Lord will open the door to your sharing the Gospel with her."

I tried to avoid Mom's glance.

"Uh-huh."

Once again I wished that I could read well enough to decipher Jennifer's handwriting and that Mom had not chosen to read Jennifer's card out loud in front of my sisters.

Rachel always wanted to pry information out of me about the state of Jennifer's soul and Janet made fun of me and how Jennifer was my girlfriend. But Jennifer was a lot more than a girlfriend, she was my best friend.

I never talked about Jennifer if I could help it. I had known her since we were three years old. Our birthdays were only a month apart. I watched her grow more beautiful each year we met on the beach at Paraggi, near Portofino, Italy, where our families had been vacationing for twelve yers.

Rachael must have seen me staring at my feet, trying not to look at Janet, who was smirking about the postcard. Rachael was curious but not mean, so she changed the subject before Janet could make one of her nasty remarks about English girls being stuck-up, or warn me about getting too attached to an unsaved, worldy girl.

"God has blessed us with a wonderful family," said Rachael.

"You mean Grandmother?" Muttered Janet.

Mom fixed Janet with her brightest reproving smile.

"The Lord had been good to us in spite of your father's unfortunate mother!"

Dad didn't say anything about how good God was even though Mom turned to him expectantly. She was probably wishing he would say something like, "And the thing I am most thankful for is the wonderful wife the Lord has given me!"

If Dad had said that, then our rare family day off and stroll down the Montreux quay would have been perfect, complete, the sort of time Mom called a special gift. Dad was not in one of his Moods or anything like that. It was just that since Grandmother arrived in 1965, two years before, Dad hardly ever joined Mom and my sisters in times of praise and thanksgiving anymore. He seemed to get less joyful in the Lord with every day that passed. Not that Dad had ever been as close to the Lord as Mom. Rachael once said that Dad was a much less mature Christian than mom.

In the sping of 1967, my father wasn't a happy man. He was forty-seven years old. He looked his age. He had no regular exercise since he was in college, where he was an alternate on the hurdles team. Dad never won anything. Mom said he was too short even by the athletic standards of the late 1930s. Now he had a potbelly and a sour expression. The only time he seemed happy was when he was preaching. He'd smile for dramatic effect. Mom said that his working-class background had a long reach, that since he was born-again Dad had changed some, but that his perfection would only be achieved in heaven. Dad wore khaki pants and plaid shirts except for Sundays when he preached; then he wore his black suit.

Mom was forty-five and beautiful. My oldest sister, Janet, who was nineteen, said how it was amazing that Dad managed to talk Mom into marrying him, that Mom could have had just about anyone. Janet looked more like Dad than Mom. I don't think she ever forgave Dad for her thick forearms and wide, flat nose. Dad and Janet both had too much upper-body strength. I was fifteen and taller than her, but Janet could still get me to do just about anything she wanted by threatening to punch me or giving me an Indian wrist burn.

Rachael was also older than me. She was seventeen. But she was a petite replica of my mom. She had fine-boned features, a tiny waist, and slim delicate wrists and ankle-bones that looked as if you could snap them with two fingers. But no one did. Not even Janet would lay a finger on Rachael. She cried easily. Mom said she had never once had to do more than give Rachael a stern look in order to get her to obey. Dad had to strap me often. He strapped Janet, too. Our hearts were a lot harder than Rachael's. Rachael was so good she often seemed to be the only Christian in our family. Her heart was so tender for the things of the Lord that she'd tear up when she listened to even the most boring missionary story. Every Easter she cried when we sang "Low in the Grave He Lay."

Mom wasn't always happy but she was our spiritual leader. She always had been. For one thing she was raised in a godly educated family, so she knew how Christians were supposed to act. Her father had been the son of a wealthy banker from Rhode Island. While Dad's relatives were swearing, drinking, and sorting coal in Pennsylvania, Mom's dad was getting a Ph.D. in Greek and New Testament studies at Princeton University. Besides having high cheekbones and a tiny waist, Mom enjoyed the benefit of perfect teeth. Dad's teeth were bad. Mom said it was because of his working-class diet, that Dad's mom neglected the bare-minimum duties of sensible nutrition.

Dad still didn't use his fork right. Mom led him to the Lord but had more succes with Dad's soul than his table manners. That's why Mom worked so hard to get me, her only son, to be more like her refined father than like my dad. She never came right out and said anything, but I knew what she meant when she'd look away from Dad when he chewed with his mouth open. Mom tried hard to educate me. She'd say, "This is how a gentleman cuts a piece of mean. Oh, how I wish you could have seen your dear grandfather's hands!" Mom maintained that you could tell everything you needed to know about a man's breeding by how he held a knife and fork.

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