One year and one arduous home-renovation into their marriage, Ken and Bing head to the French countryside to celebrate their long-delayed honeymoon, swearing they're getting out of the home-fixing business for good. When they fall in love with the village of La Montagne Noire, they find themselves buying a fixer-upper and starting all over again but this time, in French! McAdams recounts their mishaps and misadventures with humor, capturing the essence of French village life, the awkwardness of being foreigners in a close-knit town, the couple's hilarious linguistic pratfalls, and how the mammoth undertaking that threatens to tear their new marriage apart ultimately brings them closer together and helps them find a place in the community they have grown to love.
About the Author
Ken McAdams is a graduate of Yale and a former Marine Corps Naval Aviator who broke four world records and received decoration as the first civilian volunteer to fly Marines into Iraq. Pan Am's youngest divisional Chief, he was later appointed National Transportation Safety Board investigator and became Chief Operating Officer KIWI International Airlines before retiring to write full time.
Review:
This is one of the better books about Americans who have moved to France part or full time. I don't want to give away the plot since one of the charms of reading books like this is wondering what the next chapter will bring. However, I can say that this book covers a few years of their experience with France but focuses mainly on one year in a small French village. The author and his wife married each other later in life, making this book one about not only France but the struggles of merging what had been 2 lives and sets of families together. This is a really well-written book by someone who always wanted to be an author even though he had a full career as a pilot. The real surprise to me is that he hasn't had more books published. I think anyone who wants to get a flavor of what life is like for an American moving to rural France will enjoy this book.
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