A Lady in France: A Review

When I was a teenager, I was in our school’s France exchange program.  The culmination of four years learning, speaking, and writing French and discovering France’s culture and history was a month-long trip to France experiencing life as a student living with a French family.  I couldn’t wait to get there.

And then I got there, and it was not all accordion music and sipping wine on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower, falling in love with a new French boy every day.  It was navigating public transport, eating strange foods, being lost in every conversation, looking decidedly American and feeling foolish and oafish among all the French students.  I went from “Un café, s’il vous plaît,” to "AH MA GAH I JUST WANT SOME ICE IN MY COKE!”

It was a struggle for me, but full of experiences I was promised all those years in French class.  I came home with weeks of memories and a suitcase full of French school supplies, clothes, books, pictures, and a half-dozen pains au chocolat that my French mother carefully stowed in my travel bag when I wasn’t looking.

As memories fade around the edges and become more romantic with time, my trip to France became the one experience that all of my other life experiences compared to and paled against.  Something unexplainable happened during my time in France that changed my soul.

I developed a love for the culture, finding ways in all the years since to get back there and soak it up again. I’ve been back for academic conferences, family vacations, girls’ getaways, and even piggy-backed on a work trip that my husband took, dragging the kids along.  Over the years I’ve revisited old memories and made new ones, always looking for a way to get back to France.

So naturally, when I stumbled across Jennie’s blog A Lady inFrance – about her life as an American mother making a life not wholly unlike my current one, but just outside Paris – I glommed onto it like that awkward hanger-on friend that everyone had in high school.  You know the one.  The kind I still am, evidently.

As I read her blog, I fell in love with Jennie’s gentle voice and her graceful way with words even as she describes her daily life as a mom in another country.  I laughed with her mishaps and nodded my head in agreement with her spiritual truths.  I made her recipes for my family and oohed and ahhed at the gorgeous pictures she takes of her surroundings.  She was a warm embrace, a genuine person, and I related to her so much.

At some point, she started publishing her memoir on the blog, a chapter each week. 

I read, cried, laughed, and commented.  I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  Her story drew me in, leading me on an adventure across the world and back again, learning about a past so different than my own, but through the same gentle, warm voice that I’d come to love. Through that time we became friends.

That was about the time that Jennie announced that she was publishing her memoir as a book.  And when she asked friends to do a review for her, I jumped at the chance to read her story again in its entirety.

Her journey from college student living in France to life as a mom in France, gripped me even the second time around.  Her life experiences living all over the world (she’s lived on four continents) are amazing.  It’s hard to believe that one person has seen so much, has lived so much.  Jennie has, and her gorgeous descriptions of the events in her life make you feel as if you remember them with her.

Jennie takes you from France, to Taiwan, to the US, to Somaliland, Djibouti, and Kenya in Africa, and back to France.  She takes you through her own losses and joys, her heartaches and healing love experiences, and her faith journey in an open way that suggests she trusts us with the deepest secrets of her heart.  You find that she is a great friend, a strong woman, and a thoughtful partner who is generous with her life stories and what they’ve meant to her.  You find that behind all the action, there is a quiet spirit who is searching for meaning just like the rest of us.

At the end of the book, you know Jennie.  You see yourself in her, even if you haven’t lived in Europe, Asia, or Africa.  You see yourself in her even if you haven’t seen or experienced the things she has, even if you don’t share her locale.  Through her story she inspires you to be open and honest with yourself and your loved ones, to be a great friend and to appreciate all that you’ve been given, even if it’s difficult to receive. 

Jennie is honest, fearless, and genuine, and her life story as a daughter, sister, student, professional, wife, missionary, mother, and friend will stay with you after you read her book.  You will fall in love with her just as I did, even if you’re not the worst kind of  Francophile like I am.

In honor of Jennie’s publication, I am offering a chance to win a copy of her book, A Lady in France, to YOU!  And I just might throw in a little something extra just for you as well.  OMG you are a lucky duck.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Not a winner?  Don't want to wait for the contest to be over?  It's okay.  You can buy Jennie's book at Amazon right here.  Do it - you won't be sorry!

Find Jennie Goutet at her blog, on Facebook, and on Twitter.

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**I was not compensated for this review.  All gushing thoughts and opinions are my own.**