I read this book quite a few years ago and it remains fresh in my memory. There was nothing about it I did not totally love, especially Emilie. I was sad to see that there was only one other review of this excellent book. Everyone should read it, it is absolutely beautiful.

This is a book about endemic people, who, like plants, are rooted to a certain time and place with a specificity that is hard for a lot of us alive today to know. Emilie's tale of her tough life in the rugged mountains near Italy is told with such a wonderful conversational and error-laden english - completely engaging and romantic, with photos of people in the story she is telling. I read it while at my best friends house in Grenoble, and then we drove to the very town in the alps that Emilie grew up in. It was like a time capsule except for the cross country ski inns that have popped up and started a commercialization process. But the story she tells is of people who are like certain french cheeses made in a certain valley, that if you went over the mountain and into the next valley, that cheese could not be replicated. This is a great story and you will fall in love with it if you are someone who is nostalgic for a time and place when harsh weather, rugged mountains, and lots of work to do at home made a journey of 20 miles felt like it took you to another planet.

Emilie Carles started out her life the same as many of her neighbors in her predominantly peasant town in France. Unlike her neighbors, she went on to receive an education and break out of generations of grinding poverty and ingnorance. The very fact that she is able to chronicle her most unusual life is a testament to the power of the human spirit. Everyone interested in issues of class and gender influencing biography should read this excellent memoir.

This is one woman's story of life in an age and place which has disappeared over the course of a century. The voice is powerful, although the translation from the French could have been better. Carles truly makes you feel what it was like to be a young peasant woman. This isn't sentimental trash or dry history. It's a very down to earth tale of "this is what it was like for me."