Love and Gelato is a novel published by Jenna Evans Welch in 2016. It details the odyssey of a young woman who makes good on a promise made to her dying mother to go to Italy and stay with a mysterious man from her mother's past named Howard. Lina, the protagonist and first-person narrator of the story, only knows this mysterious Howard from vague mentions of him made by her mother. True to her word, she travels to Italy following her mother's death, reads a newly discovered handwritten journal left behind by her mother, meets the mysterious Howard and learns all about love and gelato and family secrets and how even parents were young and passionate and a little crazy once upon a time.
After having already been in Italy for some time, Lina is told that people come to Italy for a multitude of reasons but when they decide to stay, "it's for the same two things. Love and gelato." Upon hearing this assertion, the mysterious Howard adds, "Amen." For instance, Lina has gone to Italy at the bequest of her mother to solve some mystery about her own life that she didn't even know existed. Reading her mother's journal leads her to question the possibility that this Howard fellow is her biological father. The answer to that question is not why she decides to stay, however. Like her mother before her, she does find love herself, though she must choose between two suitors. And, of course, she also discovers the magic that is the Italian iced treat known as gelato.
The question of whether or not Howard is Lina's father is complicated by the identification of the man who got Lina's mother pregnant in her mother's journal using the letter "X." As it turns out there were two men in the life of her mom in Italy. There are also two men in the life of Lina as she visits Italy. The story seems to be suggesting something along the lines of eternal recurrence with the assertion that visitors only stay in the country for the same two reasons. Lina's experience in Italy is far from being identical to her mother's experience, but there are similarities. This aspect of the story seems to be the primary point. It is not merely incidental that the novel begins with the death of a mother and the discovery of a father. This is a story of not just love and gelato, but death and life.
