Lisa Scottoline (born July 1, 1955) is an American author of legal thrillers. Her TWENTY novels have been translated into 25 languages. The central characters of her most of her books are Extremely Clever Italian American Female Litigators of Rosatto and Associates. I have for a long time admired Lisa and given her a lot of kudos for her perfused and positive presentation of Italian Americans. 
I find it hilarious that one of her books was "Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog", and further hilarious that although she has a houseful of pets, (dogs and cats), none were male until very recently. 
I knew that after same sex marriage was approved, people would want to start marrying their pets !!!!! LOL 
Scottoline was born in Philadelphia and graduated magna cum laude  from the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a degree in English. In 1981, she received a Juris DoctorateUniversity of Pennsylvania Law School from the cum laude. She became a litigator at a prestigious law firm in Philadelphia but left the workforce after the birth of her daughter. Initially writing as a way to earn money at home, she has since written 13 bestselling novels, including Final Appeal,  and Moment of Truth. Her next thriller novel, Think Twice, was published in March 2010. Lisa raised as a single mom, her daughter Francesca, a honors graduate of Harvard, a budding writer. http://scottoline.com/Site/About/

There's nothing like your birthday to take you back to your beginnings, so it made sense that I spent mine in Ascoli Piceno, Italy. The town is 2,000 years old, and being there made me feel like an infant, as I was turning a mere 55. 
For my next birthday, I'm going to Stonehenge.
Then the more I travel, the younger I'll get.
Ascoli Piceno was the hometown of my grandparents on my father's side, Mary and Antonio Scottoline, before they emigrated to America. My father and brother had been there once, but I never had, which is something I'll explain later.
Ascoli Piceno lies on the Tronto River in the Le Marche region, in the middle of Italy. The trip from Rome took four hours by car, and the highway passed by insanely picturesque farmhouses and olive groves until it narrowed to a skinny road with hairpin turns that wound around mountains. I kept my eyes closed for the mountain part. Everyone thought I was sleeping, but I was terrified.
I like my hairpins in my hair.
I was traveling with daughter Francesca in a bite-size Fiat packed with my Italian editor, publicist, and translator, which makes me sound like I roll with an entourage to rival a rapper's. I don't, except when they're kind enough to promote my book in Italy, and because my publisher is also from Ascoli Piceno, it was his great idea to take me there.
You may be wondering why it took a complete stranger to bring me home. 
So am I.
The oldest section of the town is hewn from travertine marble taken from the surrounding mountains, and it lends a lovely gray cast to the medieval-scale houses that line the cobblestone streets, many only as wide as an alley. A town square called the Piazza del Popolo is the heart of the city, and it's ringed by a breezy arched walkway, the gorgeous Cathedral of Sant'Emidio, and a historic Town Hall. Wikipedia says the piazza is "considered one of the most beautiful in Italy," , Wikipedia is accurate.
The day I was there, the piazza was filled with a team of 75 men and women who were rehearsing their flag-throwing for La Quintana, a jousting competition to be held the next month. The flags were the Porta Solesta colors, bright yellow and clear blue, the hues of the Italian sun and sky. We watched the silk flags swirl, dip, and fly though the air, each movement timed perfectly to the beat of music played on ancient trumpets.
It was an amazing way to spend a birthday, but I was missing something.
It was more than 10 years ago that my father and brother planned their trip to Ascoli Piceno, and they asked Francesca and me to go with them, but I said no. I wished I could go but I thought I had too much work, and a deadline.
They came home full of pictures and stories, and they'd met a slew of relatives who'd fed them for three days. My father got choked up when he told me that he saw his mother's face in the features of his cousins, and how moved he was by walking the same cobblestones his parents had left behind for the alleged streets of gold in America. He laughed when he remembered that his mother had always wanted to move back to Ascoli Piceno, even after living in Philadelphia for 30 years, because the food was better.
I told my father I'd go to Ascoli Piceno with him some day, and I meant it. He said he'd wait, but cancer got to him first.
And so I found myself lighting a candle for him in the Cathedral of Sant'Emidio. It was a bitter moment, full of regret. I hadn't gone with him, but I wished I had. I wished I still could. It was an unhappy sort of birthday wish, and a weird sort of birthday candle.
I had thought work was more important. It wasn't. 
I thought I had forever. I didn't. 
Life has a deadline, too.
Then I realized that maybe I had gotten my birthday wish, after all. Because standing at the cool altar of the stone church, in the place where my father had stood, and where his father before him had stood, and even his father before him had stood, I felt connected, still. To him, and to them all. And I stood there with my own daughter and could see in her glistening eyes that she would come back here someday, maybe with her own children, to this very same spot, which had existed for thousands of years and would continue to exist for a thousand more, God willing.
Happy Birthday, to me. 
And grazie, Dad.
 

Lisa Scottoline's new novel, "Think Twice," is in stores now. Contact her at www.scottoline.com. 

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/lisa_scottoline/98596184.html?cmpid=15585797
 

The ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (With Archives) on:
[Formerly Italy at St Louis]