'Geraldina & the Compass Rose' Montauk Memoir Gets Film Adaptation

It’s an inspiring Montauk love story, told by first-time author Geraldine Brown Giomblanco about her 30-year journey to find true love.

Geraldina & the Compass Rose, a memoir published in 2019, is now in talks to become a movie, filmed in Montauk and the Hamptons. The book recently won the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award for superior work by debut authors.

“The book really comes from the perspective of my 30 years of waiting for the right person,” says Geraldine. “And not knowing if it was ever going to happen.”

Along the way, she chronicles the many miraculous signs leading her to her matrimony. Heeding her Italian grandmother Rosaria Gentile’s advice and intuition throughout the story, she provides the reader a mystical story.

She met her now husband Mark Giomblanco, of Connecticut, on his boat in Montauk, where he has been summering since 1978. The two connected over the love of being on the water.

“I held on to my faith…that is what kept me going,” she says. She was 49 at the time, and wasn’t sure if marriage was part of the plan for her. The couple met through a blind date prompted by her mom’s friend of many years and “the rest is history,” she says.

“I had a list of 50 things,” she said of finding her partner. “I wasn’t about to settle at this point in my life.”

He invited her out to Montauk on a Friday in August, and she questioned driving from Westchester, thinking of the traffic. “Geraldine, there’s nothing like waking up on the water,” he told her. “Put your mind at rest and enjoy the ride.” And she did.

“It was like the parting of the LIE,” she says. The ride was smooth sailing, and she arrived at dusk. When they met, “We knew we were so comfortable in that moment. That was it,” she says.

To make this memoir a movie she notes that Rob Simmons, award-winning producer of over 60 feature films including Wild Oats, 10,000 Saints and Human Capital, has joined on, along with director, writer, producer Ante Novakovic, whose films include Leaves of the Tree, American Fright Fest, and The Fix.

They are also collaborating with actress and director Diane Cossa, known for Wherefore Art Thou, and Law and Order, and with David Platt, who directed on Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Good Wife and The Wire.

The scenes on the East End will depict places where Mark and Geraldine dated. “It’s a movie to bring hope to people,” she says. “It’s a story that’s meant to be shared big. I don’t want it good, I want it great,” she continues.

Geraldine will be giving a Zoom talk for East Hampton Library on Wednesday, August 19, from 6 to 7 p.m. Participants can register at easthamptonlibrary.org.