Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The New Year began with a lunch in the village of Lacoste, a few miles away from Le Simiane. The food was delicious, and the atmosphere relaxed. We had been here many times as tourists, desperate for our annual ration of two or three weeks of true heat and sharp light. #2 The French have a weakness for erecting jolies villas wherever building regulations allow, and sometimes where they don’t, particularly in areas of pristine and beautiful countryside. The Lubéron Mountains rise up immediately behind the house to a high point of nearly 3,500 feet, and they run for about forty miles from west to east. #3 The French spoken by our new neighbors was not the French we had learned in school, but a rich and delicious patois that emerged from somewhere in the back of their throat and passed through their nasal passages before coming out as speech. They seemed to be a contented family. #4 The Provençales were proud of the Mistral, a wind that blew for fifteen days straight. It caused problems in Provence, from absenteeism from work to domestic squabbles.