Tag Archives: Francesca Rheannon

Book Excerpt

“The Cure Hunter” from Province of the Heart

by Francesca Rheannon

In 2001, one week after the 9/11 attacks, I arrived in the rugged, sparsely populated region of southern France’s Haute Provence for a long-planned stay. I had come to write about my father’s role in one small corner of a decades-old war, World War II, but found myself paralyzed by 9/11 and the U.S. response. In this frightening new reality, the book seemed irrelevant. But, as I tried to come to grips with this world torn apart, an entirely different book emerged, one I came to call “Province of the Heart.”

I settled in a tiny village of no more than one hundred souls, in the shadow of the mountain where the great Provençal writer Jean Giono had once created a community of visionaries dedicated to the land and its people.

Over the eight months I lived there, that land and its people stitched my world back up again, through the deep succor of the relationship between humans and the natural world that embraced them. Yet my neighbors were no innocents living out of time; instead, they clung more fiercely to the beauty they had for knowing how much it was threatened.

The following is one story from Province of the Heart, “The Cure Hunter.” Continue reading

Podcast

Cathryn Hankla, LOST PLACES: On Losing And Finding Home & Francesca Rheannon on “Finding Home”

Cathryn Hankla talks about her memoir LOST PLACES: On Losing And Finding Home. Then Francesca reads a passage about “finding home” from her memoir about Provence.

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Book Excerpt

Excerpt: “Finding Home” from PROVINCE OF THE HEART by Francesca Rheannon

                                                                 FINDING HOME

There is no Provence. Whoever loves it, loves the world, or loves nothing. –Jean Giono, Rondeur des Jours.

I woke at dawn. I had slept fitfully, thinking of my impending departure. I pulled on my shoes, took up my walking staff one last time, and headed out the door as the cat Poutin scurried past my feet into the house, looking for breakfast after a long night out.

The sky was a limpid blue with ropy trails of pink and gray-tinged clouds. The ground was dry, even at that hour, and the stony earth commented on my passing, while the wind sighed regretfully in the trees that bordered the village.

As I descended the plateau, I heard a duet of cuckoos calling to each other across the valley in contrapuntal harmony, bidding me mark the time. The church bells of the neighboring commune struck the half hour — 6:30. Sheep bells chimed from across the valley, as if in answer. Continue reading

Podcast

Rita Dove, COLLECTED POEMS & Thanksgiving on WV

Poet Rita Dove talks about her Collected Poems 1974-2004, published by W.W. Norton. Then, we honor our Thanksgiving tradition of airing Marge Bruchac’s true story of Thanksgiving and a reading of Francesca’s story, The Food Philosophe. Continue reading