My friend Jo Piazza (no relation to Mike the Hall of Fame baseball player) has a new book out. It’s essentially a travel memoir recounting the first year of her marriage where she crowdsourced marriage advice from everywhere that she and her husband went. They traveled from Paris to Tanzania to the border of India and Bangladesh, Israel, Denmark, Amsterdam, Sweden, Chile, and Mexico. It’s also about how to transition from a fiercely independent person into someone’s partner, which is key to a marriage and a situation many frequent travelers find themselves in. Jo was kind enough to send us a book and note stating that Natalie and I were an inspiration to her.
Here’s the description from Amazon:
“At age 34, award-winning journalist and author Jo Piazza got her romantic comedy ending when she met the man of her dreams on a boat in the Galapagos islands and married him three months later. But before long, Piazza found herself riddled with questions. How do you create a healthy marriage right from the very beginning? How do you make a modern marriage work in a world where the institution is increasingly obsolete? Why is no one talking about how to cultivate a healthy marriage before you find yourself in one that needs to be fixed? How does an independent, strong-willed feminist become someone’s partner—all the time?
As a travel editor, Jo found herself in the unique (and enviable!) position of being able to travel the world in search of answers and, alongside her new husband, Nick, decided to devote the first year of their marriage to exploring the rituals, customs, and traditions from other countries and cultures, all in an attempt to learn what modern marriage means, how it works, why it ends, and why it matters.
The result, told with elegant prose, astute reporting, and hilarious insight into the human psyche, is ‘How to Be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage’ (Harmony Books, April 18, 2016). In this extraordinary memoir about what really happens after we say “I do,” Jo’s recounts her epic journey around the globe in search of what a modern marriage should look like and shares the most effective advice she gathered from hundreds of real women and men.
For Jo and Nick, however, the first year of marriage brought far more than they bargained for: a terrifying health diagnosis, caring for sick parents, losing a job. They found themselves plumbing new depths in their relationship and ultimately finding a fresh understanding of what it means to be equal partners, during the good and bad times. Yet, their spirit, curiosity, humor, and love are unflagging throughout as they interview hundreds of men and women on a range of topics from polygamy in Kenya, open marriage in France, sex in Orthodox Israel, and marital equality in Sweden.
“How to Be Married,” at turns provocative, entertaining, and touching, is ultimately a grand experiment that will change the way we look at marriage and commitment. And Jo is the dream guide for this incredible journey, both around the world and into the vulnerable places within our own relationships. She’s side-splittingly funny, insightful, empathetic, and real, and I can’t wait for you to spend time with her in these pages.”
Grab it: Grab “How to Be Married: What I Learned from Real Women on Five Continents About Surviving My First (Really Hard) Year of Marriage” by Jo Piazza on Amazon from $17.08.