$24.95
CastOff
True Adventures and Ordeals of
an American Family on a French Farm
by Jan Murra
When Jan Rucker's husband, Rob, comes home with the surprising, but alluring idea of relocating his family to a farm in the French countryside to get away from the drugs and violence of urban America, Jan is initially reluctant but eventually agrees. She doesn't suspect that her husband's real motive is his spurious other life.
Soon she and her four young children find themselves left in a three-hundred-year-old, run-down farmhouse without plumbing, heat or electricity to which her husband, who says he is immersed in a new business back in the U.S., returns only twice in the next year.
Finally Rob confesses he loves and has been living with someone else for several years in the States. Hearbroken but determined, Jan and the children vote to stay in France and, with the help of an attractive, friendly neighbor, Gabriel, learn the intricacies of dealing with French schools, boisterous farm animals and the local paysannes who are suspicious of an American woman, especially one with an absent husband.
Humor and hard-won lessons in life and love infuse this luminous true story of a cast off family who build an adventurous new life.
"Facing tremendous odds...she overcame and thrived.
She looks back on her life in France with pride and affection."
— Publishers Weekly
"A comical, touching story."
— East Valley Tribune
*Featured in the Arizona Republic and The Star-Ledger
*Excerpted by Dial-A-Book
Jan Murra returned to the United States from France and attended Oregon State University and UCLA. She became a grant writer for Arizona State University, where she met her present husband, Richard. A freelance writer, she volunteers her time as the president of the Auxiliary Program at Chandler Regional Hospital and a member of the Hospital Foundation Board. She and her husband reside in Chandler, Arizona.
A New Horizon Press Release
Lifestyle/Memoir
6 x 9, 320 pages
LC #2001089171, world rights
ISBN: 0-88282-209-8 (hc), $24.95