A Gift from Brittany

In this enchanting European version of A Year by the Sea, an artist recalls herliberating sojourn in France during the sixties—and the friendship that transformed her life.Marjorie was a young woman from Chicago in the 1960s who shocked her family and fiance bymoving to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. There she fell in love and marriedYves, a handsome and volatile French painter. On a trip to Breton, a rugged area on the northerncoast of France, her husband impulsively purchases nearly half of a hamlet, La Salle, and she findsherself renovating a house in this remote village. Surrounded by neighbors who dress only inblack, speak patois, and still employ customs and farming methods from the Middle Ages,Marjorie finds a friend in Jeanne, an old and illiterate peasant woman who has three cows to hername and no knowledge of the world outside her village. Their differences are staggering, yet asMarjorie's marriage unravels they forge a friendship brimming with laughter, wisdom, and anuncommon exchange of customs from vastly different cultures.A Gift from Brittany is a charming, moving memoir about the grace that can be foundthrough friendship, and finding reserves of strength you never knew you possessed.