They had been there often as tourists. They had cherished the dream of someday living all year under the Provencal sun. And suddenly it happened. Here is the month-by month account of the charms and frustrations that Peter Mayle and his wife -- and their two large dogs -- experience their first year in the remote country of the Luberon restoring a two-centuries-old stone farmhouse that they bought on sight. From coping in January with the first mistral,...

The author introduces readers to some of the interesting characters found in the region of Provence--a disgraced gendarme, a gourmet in a track suit, and a man whose ambition is to make toads sing.