AMOUR PROVENCE

This breathtaking novel, set in two tiny neighboring villages in Provence and spanning almost 70 years, catches moments in the intertwining lives of generations of the inhabitants, especially one man and one woman who have yet to find love.

In the farm country of the south of France life unfolds with the rhythm of the seasons. But the people who inhabit the area are anything but predictable. Like the climate, the characters of this novel, even the mildest among them, find themselves swept away by storms of unannounced and devastating intensity. A vintner’s adolescent son has a passionate romance with his schoolmate’s mother and they suffer different and enduring consequences. A young Arab woman forced into an arranged marriage, learns that life in the land of Liberté and Egalité can be just as confining as in her own country. A French woman who has lived abroad for many years returns home and discovers that because of deeply held secrets certain members of her family are not pleased to have her back. An unexpected encounter with his past brings new sparks of life to a man who believed he had lost everything including the one woman he ever loved.

In two small adjacent villages in the South of France, these characters live out lives that overlap and intertwine over several decades, spanning nearly 70 years from the Nazi occupation to the present. Age-old resentments and closely guarded secrets retain their hold but are too laden to be discussed, except perhaps late at night over a glass of strong, amber-colored marc de Gigondas

Constance Leisure began her career as an editor at Ladies Home Journal and Family Circle before moving to Paris with her husband and two young. Early on, while on a trip to Provence to fill up the trunk of the family car with wine, they stumbled upon and purchased an old farmhouse with an enchanted garden in a small wine village in the Vaucluse. Little by little, the house in Provence became the center of her family life and her creative imagination. This is her first novel.