My Little Donkey

A collection of searching, curious, and surprising essays catalyzed by the author's move in her sixties to a small Italian village, exploring selfhood, coincidence, inheritance, and the impermanence of identity
In 2021, in her mid-sixties, Martha Cooley moved with her husband from the United States to Castiglione del Terziere, a village in northernmost Tuscany. Prompted by this relocation, the essays in My Little Donkey chronicle her encounters with people, animals, the past, and herself as she reckons with the fallout of a major life-change.
Following curiosity where it leads, Cooley delves into music and silence, the vagaries of history, the complexity of familial legacies, and the presence and power of animals in human lives. With its spirited examinations of uncanny coincidences and chance events, My Little Donkey’s varied essays offer the vivid pleasures of story combined with the provocations of a writer looking behind the curtain of appearances, intent on honest assessments of what she sees and feels. Whimsical yet at the same time intellectually and emotionally bold, these essays tackle the conundrum of time’s passage: how to adapt, pay attention, embrace contradiction, and enjoy the ride?

MARTHA COOLEY is the author of three novels—The Archivist (a national bestseller published in a dozen foreign markets), Thirty-Three Swoons, and Buy Me Love—and the memoir Guesswork. Her short fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals.