A Room Full of Romania
On Thursday evening, June 4, we gathered at the Symmes Township Branch Library for the first book signing and author conversation for To Romania, with Love: Notes from a Country I Never Quite Left. The evening was held in the Community Room from 7:00 to 8:00 PM, with friends, readers, and members of the Romanian community coming together for a conversation about memory, travel, history, and belonging.
It is a strange and wonderful thing to sit in a library in Loveland, Ohio, and talk about Bucovina, Bucharest mornings, painted monasteries, warm bread, family kitchens, Communist television, Brâncuși, the Danube Delta, and the small durable habits by which a country survives in memory. A book may begin alone — usually at a desk, often too late at night, and occasionally under the dangerous influence of airport coffee — but it becomes real in a room.
And Thursday night, the room made it real.
The evening was intentionally informal: a short reading, an author conversation, audience questions, and time afterward to chat and sign books. The event invitation described it as a chance to come for “a short reading, a conversation about memory, travel, history, and belonging, and a chance to have your copy signed.”
What moved me most was not simply that people came. It was that they came ready to remember.
Some came with their own Romania. Some came curious about mine. Some came because they have lived between places and know that belonging is not always a matter of geography. And some came because they have known me for years in Cincinnati and were kind enough to meet this other version of me — the one who has been quietly carrying Romania around for most of his life.
The conversation circled around the phrase in the subtitle: “a country I never quite left.” I was asked what that means, and the short answer is this: you can leave a country physically, but some part of you remains there permanently — usually near a kitchen, a train station, or an aunt with strong opinions. The longer answer is the book itself.
To Romania, with Love is not a guidebook. It does not rank destinations or explain the country in five convenient lessons, which is fortunate, because Romania would object immediately and then offer you soup. The book is made of twenty patient notes: about cities and villages, food and institutions, family memory and public history, the Romania I knew as a child and the one I keep meeting again as an adult. The invitation described the book as one that “does not try to explain the country” but instead “pays attention, one bowl of soup, one wooden gate, one kitchen-table conversation at a time.”
One of the questions that stayed with me was about whether writing the book changed how I see Romania or Cincinnati. The answer is yes. Romania became more human and less abstract. Cincinnati became less foreign and more chosen. Writing teaches you that belonging can have more than one address.
That may be the quiet argument of the whole book: leaving does not end your relationship with a place. Sometimes it clarifies it. Distance can be a very good editor. It removes some illusions and sharpens others. It teaches you what you miss, what you invented, what you misunderstood, and what somehow remained true.
I am especially grateful to everyone who helped make the evening possible — the friends who came early, the people who brought books, the readers who asked questions, the community members who carried stories of their own, and the library team who gave us a room in which all of this could happen. The evening included a community welcome, an introduction, readings, moderated conversation, audience Q&A, a signing line, portraits, and a group photo near the print display.
The event was never meant to be a formal launch in the polished, theatrical sense. It was meant to be a gathering: a little reading, a little conversation, a little laughter, a little homesickness, and a reminder that memory is less private than we think.
A few people asked what I hope readers do after finishing the book. My answer is simple: call someone they love, ask an older relative one more question, or travel with a little more patience than usual.
That feels even more true after Thursday night.
Thank you to everyone who came, listened, laughed, remembered, and carried a small piece of the country home. Thank you for making the book feel less like an object and more like a conversation.
And if you could not join us, the invitation remains open in another form: read the chapters, share the memories, and send it to the Romanian friend who still argues about the best covrig.
Read the book
To Romania, with Love: Notes from a Country I Never Quite Left is available on Amazon. The event invitation included this book link: Buy or view the book on Amazon.
You can also visit the book site here: Visit the To Romania, with Love book site.
For press, events, and media inquiries, visit the press page.
With gratitude,
Eleodor Sotropa
