A regular summer Island impressario, Elizabeth Dembrowsky on Saturday debuts her first novel, My Monk, with two readings (1 and 6 p.m.) at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven.

The book notes say: “Harriet Zabrosky believed in love at first sight — until it happened to her. He became a monk. She moved back to America.”

Calling My Monk a story of sadness, humor and pathos, Ms. Dembrowsky introduces readers to a young, idealistic American who arrives in England for graduate school and becomes involved in an unlikely friendship with a religious and temperamental Romanian poet. Harriet, a liberal atheist, draws closer to her fellow graduate student, attracted to him because of their differences.

Weaving in a back story and taking the character forward in time to life in New York city, My Monk (Heliotrope Books, August 2009, $16.95) is unusual in both in format and style. It includes nearly 90 footnotes of anecdotes and commentary, plus a dozen original poems.

David Morley, director of the Warwick Writing Programme, calls it “deft and delightful storymaking.”