Luca Lucchesi had it all—a successful restaurant, a loving wife, an adoring mother. Then it all came crashing down. Occhi Belli by Tim McDonald explores the depths of Luca’s despair, his battle with alcohol, and ultimately his journey back to life—and love.
Luca hadn’t planned to work in the restaurant industry but eighteen years later there he was, what one would call a “lifer.” Time flows differently in the lives of restaurant people, and it flew by for Luca. He was coming up on Occhi Belli’s tenth anniversary but felt like he’d opened it just yesterday. Luca’s vision had been a simple one—to build a great restaurant with great food and great characters. With that goal in mind, he built Occhi Belli into a hugely successful neighborhood gem in north Seattle. He’d poured his life into it and truly loved it, but at what price?
He knows he drinks too much, but it is part of the world in which he lives. So far, he’s been lucky and has never been caught driving after drinking. Then his luck runs out.
He totals his car, is hit with a DUI, and his life begins to unravel. His wife, Lillian, announces she’s had enough and files for divorce. After nine years of watching Luca put his restaurant and alcohol before her and their marriage, she chooses her own well-being over his. But suddenly single at thirty-six, Lillian wonders what she will do next.
Luca stumbles through his days and nights, drowning his feelings with drink and the intoxicating energy of the restaurant until he gets a phone call from his stepdad and must face his greatest fear. His beloved mother Francesca’s battle with lung cancer is at its end. She’s dying. Luca’s father died when he was twelve years old, and since then it had been just the two of them. But over the last ten years, the restaurant had become his priority and he’d not seen her as often as he should have.
Occhi Belli follows Lillian and Luca as they struggle to find their separate ways forward to happiness, meaning, and love.
Luca spends a stint in rehab, but returns to the restaurant and quickly plunges back into his old ways. Unable to face his grief and guilt, he continues to drink away his emotions and memories. Without Lillian or his mother in his life, what does he have to live for anyway? After a particularly painful bender, Luca realizes he has hit rock bottom. He must make a drastic change in his life to survive, so he sells Occhi Belli to his chef, packs up, and moves to Italy to learn how to make wine in the land of his parents.
Luca feels his mother all around him in Italy—watching, judging, disappointed by him. He throws himself into the world of Italian wine and meets the beautiful, seductive, and perhaps slightly dangerous Matilda. When her past eventually finds them, it almost destroys Luca and the love they’ve nurtured.
Meanwhile, Lillian struggles with her own regrets and overwhelming loneliness. She is working too much, sleeping too little, and living her life through her patients.
When her best friend Sarah meets someone, Lillian is happy for her but also envious and afraid she’ll lose the one person who is always there for her. It’s only after Lillian realizes what she most wants that she begins her own new journey toward connection and fulfillment.
Occhi Belli is above all else a story of love and change in the wake of sorrow.
Anyone who loves Italy will recognize the strong passion Tim McDonald has for its mesmerizing beauty and transformative powers. His sumptuous descriptions of food and wine will revel in the joy of taste. As it turns out, Italian wine and Italian love can, indeed, break through grief and loss.
