Friday, January 6, 2017

Cafe Oc, the Book, Is Out!


I am so pleased to share with you that my book, Cafe Oc--A Nomad's Tales of Magic Mystery, and Finding Home in the Dordogne of Southwestern France, was just released by Shanti Arts Publishing.

A travel narrative and memoir set in southwestern France, Cafe Oc is available everywhere you like to buy your books, online or from your favorite local bookstore. If you are a bookstore owner, it is distributed by Ingram among other distributors so will be in your usual ordering venues.

I also am so happy to see that readers are already telling me how they are enjoying the book. One, on Amazon, called it a page-turner and also strongly suggested that you shop for French food and wine before you start to read it so that you don't wind up too hungry! That was when I realized I wrote more about the regional and visceral experiences of food and wine than I had thought. Those culinary journeys are interspersed with adventures into the wild forests and caves as well as into the humorous, engaging, and warm local life that is closely attuned to the land. It also goes deeply into a rich folklore that remains intact in this never-industrialized and deeply ancient part of France and Europe.

Given the natural cadences of life in the Dordogne as woven in with the seasons, Cafe Oc unfolds with the seasons as well, beginning with my first winter there--exactly eight years ago--and continuing into first spring, first summer, first autumn, and coming full circle with second winter and into spring again.

Cafe Oc is as much a love letter to the Dordogne as it is a meditation on home and belonging and how we find ourselves in our most authentic places, both within and without. And it does have a good strong dose of real magic and mystery, experiences that simply happen by showing up and stepping into the unknown.

I hope you will greatly enjoy reading Cafe Oc, and as we make the passage through winter, I want to wish you a joyous and fulfilling 2017. Tous les meilleurs voeux pour la nouvelle année!