Learning to Live With Fritz

An opera singer meets her greatest teacher in a Manhattan pet shop.

In Learning to Live with Fritz author E. Rawlins tells the story of how one crazy little dog changed her life.

A soon-to-be divorced soprano is mysteriously compelled to purchase a pup only days before saying goodbye to her unhappy role of California corporate wife. Rushing back to Europe to save what is left of her flagging career, the decision to take along a twelve-week-old Maltese puppy is more than implausible ... it is insane.

Humorous and self-critical Rawlins tells the story of her chaotic adventures with Frizbee, an eight pound nut-case who was in reality an ill-tempered angel in a hairy disguise. Fifteen years of non-stop travel take the dizzy diva and her high maintenance mascot to Paris, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Vienna, Salzburg, Milan, and back to the Big Apple. Along the way they pick up a handsome young baritone on his personal journey to international operatic celebrity. As the drama unfolds the idea of love at first sight reveals itself to be anything but a romantic illusion.

Fritz continually upstages and controls his mistress through his rigidly enforced rules and regulations, his antics, his irascible charm ... and his bizarre other worldly connections. This is a memoir of a narcissistic would-be diva and a dog who is dead serious about teaching her how to give up her me-myself and I illusions, to live authentically ... and above all to learn the meaning of unconditional love.