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 Leah & Friends in Iwakuni, Japan   I've often wondered what inspired me, a girl of simple origins from an average mid-western town, to travel the world.   Maybe it was the subscription to National Geographic my grandfather gave me for my fifth birthday.  Each month, the magazine would arrive in my mailbox with a little label bearing my name and address.  Truth be known, the label on the outside of the magazine was almost as exciting as the glossy photos on the inside.  Photos of far-away places like Mykonos and Madrid and Mozambique. I remember one issue about the Seychelles.  An article inside explained that archaeologists believed the Garden of Eden was located off the coast of one of the islands.  The article included photos of what looked like a submerged tree with great vines swaying as if on a breeze.  How it captured my young imagination!  Oh to dive below the sea an...

(Editors Note: This is the second installment of a two-part article. If you would like to read the first installment, please click here .) The Hospitality of a Comte Chateau de Bouceel Reluctantly, I departed Mont Saint Michel and headed inland.  I had made a reservation to spend a few nights at  Château de Boucéel , an 18th century chateau that operates as a bed and breakfast. I felt a jolt of excitement as soon as I turned down the long, tree-lined drive and again when I gazed upon the impressive chateau with the steeply-sloped mansard roof, curved pediment, and tall windows. The neatly clipped lawn, white painted footbridge spanning the pond, and the charming outbuildings stirred my writer's imagination, but it was what I discovered inside Château de Boucéel that made a lasting impression on my romantic soul. I had barely stepped onto the gravel drive when the front door opened and a tall, nattily dressed man with aquiline features rushed out to help me ...

Leah, on a tidal flat near Mont St-Michel When I first visited Normandy in 2005, I already knew my family had strong ties to the region...    My grandfather was one of the 160,000 Allied troops to storm the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.  Although Gramps wielded the most influence on me in my formative years - I even lived with him for awhile - I know very little about what he experienced that day.  In truth, he only spoke to me about it on one occasion; an off-handed remark that has burned itself into my memory and haunted me for over thirty years.  I am sorry to say that w hat he did tell me is not available for public consumption.  What I can tell you is that it left such a powerful, indelible mark on my psyche that when I visited Normandy all those years later, I felt a powerful connection with the place.   But this is not a travelogue about the battlefields and blood-tinged beaches of Normandy; it is about the p...

In the wash of mercury moonlight, I watched the mentally retarded man struggle to pedal his bike down the icy, snow-crusted sidewalk. Frankly, it was difficult not to watch him. His many red, blinking bike lights were mesmerizing in the inky Alaskan darkness.  His pursed lips and furrowed brow begged to be noticed and bespoke the Herculean effort he was undertaking. Apart from the blinking lights and his determined expression, something else prompted me to remain parked on the deserted city street - even after the stoplight flashed from red to green to red again. I didn't understand what it was about the mentally handicapped bike rider that was prompting me to delay my early-morning bagel run - but there I was, fiddling with the temperature control on my heated leather driver's seat in my luxury sedan, and counting each excruciatingly slow evolution of his bike wheel. Was it curiosity about his motivation for being out so early and in negative 4 degree w...

It was one of those dreary days when gray flannel clouds blanketed the sky and errant raindrops pattered against my window, harbingers of the deluge that was to come.  The children were at school.  The dog was stretched out on the wood floor, her legs twitching as she no doubt dreamt of chasing seagulls on the lonely stretch of beach we often claimed as our own.  Though I had laundry to fold and manuscript pages to revise, the quiet house and approaching storm set a scene more conducive for reading than working.  With the the rain still pattering and the dog still twitching, I decided to abandon my tasks.  I grabbed a stack of books from my nightstand and took refuge upon the cushions of my favorite overstuffed toile chair.  At the top of my "To Be Read" stack was the slender biography  Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution  by Gita May.  I looked ...

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you are well aware of my ardent belief in the power of serendipity. In Serendipity and the Boob Tree I wrote about my unexpected encounter with Marie Antoinette’s tumor-riddled tree. In Serendipity in a Prison I told you about a chance encounter I had in a chateau prison deep in the heart of the Loire Valley. Today, I would like to tell you about a frighteningly-fabulous serendipitous encounter. Five years ago, I read about an event that occurred during the French Revolution which captured my imagination. At the height of the Reign of Terror, the bloodiest period of the revolution, a black hearted official came up with a new and thoroughly dishonorable way of executing enemies of the Republic. Jean-Baptiste Carrier, an especially cruel member of the new government, gave the order to have 90 prisoners placed on a flat-bottomed barge, taken to the middle of the Loire River, and drowned. Thousands of people, most of them innocent of any real c...