CAST OFF: True Adventures and Ordeals of an American Family on a French Farm

In her acknowledgments, Murra says, "credit must be given to my once-husband, Dan, for dumping us on an antiquated farm in southwestern France...." Several years after persuading her to leave New Jersey for "Operation Let's-Move-to-a-Simpler-Life" on a dilapidated, 300-year-old farm in the Dordogne, Dan abandoned her for another woman in the United States. Left on her own to support four children, all under the age of 11, Murra decided to emulate the local people and become a dairy farmer. For 10 years she labored at this "backbreaking, heartbreaking, unrelenting, freezing, sweaty, make-do, non-profit occupation." Living the same rough life as her neighbors, and facing tremendous odds—no experience whatever at farming, rudimentary knowledge of the language, bad weather, financial worries, depression about the breakup of her marriage—she overcame and thrived. She did so well, in fact, that when she finally decided to go home to the States so her children could attend college, one of her rural neighbors exclaimed, "But you can't. You're one of us." She felt it was the "finest compliment" she'd ever received. Now remarried and living in Arizona, she looks back on her life in France with pride and affection—the countryside she grew to love, the run-down farm she restored so well, the animals she cared for, the neighbors who accepted and helped her, her plucky children who worked alongside her and encouraged her every step of the way. This is a heartfelt addition to the current spate of memoirs by expatriates. (Nov.)