When Gail Reitano and her partner, Nick Bogle, want Italian food, they descend on San Francisco’s North Beach. Closer to home, which is in Bolinas, their favorite restaurants are Marin Joe’s and San Anselmo’s Insalata. If Reitano could have her favorite Italian dish, she’d have the vongole pasta in a white sauce, with fresh clams, that her father made long ago, and that she still remembers as though it were yesterday.

Pasta, polenta and risotto aficionados can enjoy a taste of authentic Italian food and culture and the Italian language in Reitano’s new novel, Italian Love Cake (Bordighera Press; $20), which features feisty Marie Genovese, who has two wild and crazy brothers and a lover trapped in a marriage with a woman he doesn’t love.