Mademoiselle Benoir

Christine Conrad's charming and spirited novel offers a fresh look at life's pleasures in the French countryside. Thirty-something American Tim Reinhart leaves New York and purchases a farmhouse in rural France, where he fills his days restoring the property and pursuing his artistic passion. Letters to his family and friends back home vividly illustrate Tim's blissful immersion in the divine meals, deep-rooted customs, and quirky community of his new pastoral surroundings. But his enchantment grows more complicated when he befriends another artist -- his beautiful and much older neighbor, Catherine Benoir. As their relationship escalates, tensions run high on both sides of the Atlantic. From her aristocratic family's fiery protests and his parents' pleas of caution to the astonishing response of the village locals, Tim and Catherine's love affair triggers explosive reactions.

"'A Year in Provence' meets 'Le Mariage' in this epistolary first novel....Mademoiselle Benoir combines middle-aged romance with lots of day-to-day detail about life in rural France...a pleasant excursion. Catherine Deneuve would be a perfect Catherine; and for Tim, who else but Ashton Kutcher?" The New York Times Book Review