The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted: A Novel

by Bridget Asher Narrated by Kate Reading

Overview

From the author of My Husband's Sweethearts and The Pretend Wife comes a moving novel about love and hope in the face of loss, in which a small house in the French countryside may be responsible for mending hearts since World War II.

Brokenhearted and still mourning the loss of her husband, Heidi travels with Abbot, her obsessive-compulsive eight-year-old son, and Charlotte, her intolerably jaded sixteen-year-old niece, to spend the summer repairing their family home in a small village in the south of France. There, thousands of miles from home, Charlotte makes a shocking confession, and Heidi learns the truth about her mother's “lost summer” when she was a child. As three generations collide with each other, the neighbor next door-who seems to know all their family secrets-and an enigmatic Frenchman, they'll journey through love, loss, and healing amid the lavender fields, warm winds, and pistou soup of Provence.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Fans of Under the Tuscan Sun will adore this impossibly romantic read."—People magazine

“Unabashedly romantic and unafraid of melancholy, Asher’s book is a real charmer about a Provencal house that casts spells over the lovelorn.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
"Readers who enjoy...Lolly Winston’s Good Grief and Jane Green’s The Beach House or travel-induced transformation books like Frances Mayes’s Under the Tuscan Sun and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love will find common themes in Asher’s engaging third novel...and become quickly invested in the lives of the deftly drawn characters."—Library Journal

"A beautiful, tender book about love and loss that will touch your heart...Verdict: five-star weepie."—Herald Sun (AU)

"Like a dip in a cool pool, Bridget Asher’s The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted is a refreshing escape."—Campus Circle

“An enchantment of a book, woven out of Bridget Asher’s tenderness toward her characters, her love of the French countryside, and a gentle faith in possibilities. It held me spellbound from the first word to the last, when I put it aside with a sigh of both regret and deepest satisfaction….I madly, madly, madly loved this book!”
—BARBARA O’NEAL, author of How to Bake a Perfect Life

“The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted will have you canceling dinner plans, staying up all hours and flat-out ignoring your family, just so you can keep reading...An absorbing, beautifully written tale about life, death, love, food, and the magic of new possibilities.”
—J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN, author of Commencement and Maine

"[A] great read...This book was difficult to put down."—The Pilot (NC)

"Will touch readers long after the last page is read. The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted would make an excellent book discussion pick or a perfect choice for a book to read during spring break."—Rundpinne

"I found myself racing through this novel, gulping it down and immersing myself in its comforting words. Julianna Baggott writes from the heart. Her prose is deeply felt and honest. I loved her descriptions of the French countryside, her understanding of her characters, and the way she was able to merge the stories of multiple characters into a cohesive and compelling novel."—Caribousmom

"An amazing story...The characters drew me into a world of love, tenderness and melancholy in such a way that when I finished the story, I kept looking for more...I don’t think that I will ever think about life, love and one’s heritage the same way again."—Night Owl Reviews

"Perfect for curling up with on a rainy night or savoring with a cup of tea beside you."—Northside (Australia)

"A thoroughly delightful, emotionally satisfying story...[Asher] skillfully evokes the emotions her characters are feeling in her readers...[including] quite possibly one of the most romantic scenes ever committed to the printed page...The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted gets my highest recommendation. It is easily one of the best books I have read so far in 2011."—Colloquium

"Love and its sweet secrets bloom gloriously in The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted. Bridget Asher offers up a sumptuous exploration of how grief, love, and joy, when stirred just right, ferry us home to the people and places we most cherish. Asher’s novel brims with wisdom and laughter, teaching us anew that hope resides in unexpected places: a charred box of beloved recipes, a troubled child’s earthy wisdom, an ailing house in need of an artful hand, a mother who listens to a silent mountain, and a kiss that unlocks the puzzle of what forever truly means.”
—CONNIE MAY FOWLER, author of How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly and Before Women Had Wings

“I enjoyed The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted so much—it's well written, beautifully characterized, extremely atmospheric and at times very touching—an enchanting and compelling tale.”
—ISABEL WOLFF, author of A Vintage Affair

"Bridget Asher has exceeded [Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes]...Blend[s] true romance with...astute observation."—Free Lance-Star

"A story full of hope, promise, and the love one feels for someone even after they are gone. It’s about families finding each other, about secrets being told, and about coming home again...A tender-hearted love story."—Lori's Reading Corner

"Home, hearth and heartbreak are the keynotes of Asher's latest. She delicately weaves a tale of love and loss with undying devotion to family and the secrets they keep...Beautiful."—Romantic Times

"Quickly has you saying ooh la la...perfect for that beach read."—Ellen Firer, director, Merrick Library

"Every now and again, a book just grabs you and won’t let go. You pop open the cover and start to read, getting more excited with each written word. And you can’t stop reading. (Not for anything! Not even reality TV—or anyone—even the husbands.) Which is exactly what happened when we read The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted. It's the perfect blend of romance, humor and love."—Chick Lit is Not Dead

"A tearjerker of a novel for both foodies and fans of tightly knit family stories."—Booklist

"Charming and full of hope. For me, this novel is what I class a comfort read. I started it and was immediately taken by the story and just couldn't put it down."—Peeking Between the Pages

"An easy and enjoyable read, perfect for those dreary winter days when scenes of a Provencal summer are most welcome."—Indaily

"Engaging and hard to resist...If you like stories about characters that change and triumph with flawed but ultimately strong female characters, this is for you!"—Fresh Fiction

"The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted is a charming and sweet novel, full of wonderful characters and an amazing setting. It’s perfect escapist fare, great for a quiet and cozy afternoon when a reader wants to be transported to somewhere else entirely." —S. Krishna's Books

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169574081
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/29/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Ever since Henry’s death, I’d been losing things.
 
I lost keys, sunglasses, checkbooks. I lost a spatula and found it in the freezer, along with a bag of grated cheese.
 
I lost a note to Abbot’s third-grade teacher explaining how I’d lost his homework.
 
I lost the caps to toothpaste and jelly jars. I put these things away open-mouthed, lidless, airing. I lost hairbrushes and shoes—not just one of a pair, but both.
 
I left jackets behind in restaurants, my pocketbook under my seat at the movies, my keys on the checkout counter of the drugstore—afterward, I sat in my car for a moment, disoriented, trying to place exactly what was wrong and then trudged back into the store, where the checkout girl jingled them for me above her head.
 
I got calls from people who were kind enough to return things. And when things were gone—just gone—I retraced my steps and then got lost myself. Why am I here at this mini mart? Why am I back at the deli counter?
 
I lost track of friends. They had babies, defended dissertations, had art showings and dinner parties and backyard barbecues …
 
Most of all, I lost track of large swaths of time. Kids at Abbot’s bus stop and in the neighborhood and in his class and on his Little League team kept inching taller all around me. Abbot kept growing, too. That was the hardest to take.
 
I also lost track of small pieces of time—late mornings, evenings. Sometimes I would look up and it was suddenly dark outside, as if someone had flipped a switch. The fact of the matter was, life charged on without me. This realization still caught me off guard even two years later, although by this point it had become a habit, a simple unavoidable fact: The world charged on and I did not.
 
So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that Abbot and I were running late for the bridesmaid bonding on the morning of my sister’s wedding. We had spent the morning playing Apples to Apples, interrupted by phone calls from the Cake Shop.
 
“Jude … Jude, slow down. Five hundred lemon tarts?” I stood up from the couch where Abbot was eating his third freezer pop of the morning—the kind that come in vivid colors packaged in plastic tubes that you have to snip with scissors and that sometimes make you cough. Even this detail is pained: Abbot and I had been reduced to eating frozen juice in plastic. “No, no, I’m sure,” I continued. “I would have written down the order. At least … Shit. This is probably my fault. Do you want me to come in?”
 
Henry hadn’t only been my husband; he’d also been my business partner. I’d grown up making delicate pastries, thinking of food as a kind of art, but Henry had convinced me that food is love. We’d met during culinary school, and shortly after Abbot was born we’d embarked on another labor of love: the Cake Shop.
 
Jude had been with us from the start. She was a single mom—petite, mouthy, with short bleached-out hair and a heart-shaped face—that strange combination of beauty and toughness. She was our first hire and had a natural flair, a great sense of design, and marketing savvy. After Henry’s death, she’d stepped up. Henry had been the one to handle the business side of things, and I’d have lost the shop, I’m quite sure, if it weren’t for Jude. Jude became the guiding force, my rudder. She kept things going.
 
I was about to tell Jude that I’d be at the shop in half an hour when Abbot reached up and tugged on my sleeve. He pointed at the watch he wore, its face in the shape of a baseball. Perhaps as a result of my spaciness, Abbot insisted on keeping his own time.
 
When I realized that it was now after noon, I shouted, “The wedding! I’m so sorry! I’ve got to go!” then hung up the phone.
 
Abbot, wide-eyed, said, “Auntie Elysius is going to be so mad!” He leaned over to scratch a mosquito bite on his ankle. He was wearing his short white sports socks and his ankle looked like it had a golfer’s tan, but really it was dirt.
 
“Not if we hurry!” I said. “And grab some calamine lotion so you don’t itch during the ceremony.”
 
We darted around our little three-bedroom bungalow madly. I found one of my heels in the closet and the other in Abbot’s bedroom in a big tub of Legos. Abbot was wrestling on his rented tux. He struggled with the tiny cuff buttons, searching for the clip-on tie and cummerbund—he’d chosen red because it was the color that Henry had worn at our wedding. I wasn’t sure that was healthy, but didn’t want to draw attention to it.
 
I threw on makeup and slipped the bridesmaid’s dress over my head, grateful that the dress wasn’t your typical bridesmaid’s horror show—my sister had exquisite taste, and this was the most expensive dress I’d ever worn, including my own wedding dress.
 
When I’d declined the role of Elysius’s matron of honor—or was it, to be grimly accurate, widow of honor?—my sister had been visibly relieved. She knew that I’d only gum up the works. In a heartbeat, she’d called an old college friend with a marketing degree, and I was happily demoted to bridesmaid. Abbot had been enlisted as the ring bearer, and to be honest, I didn’t even feel like I was up for the role of mother-of-the-ring-bearer. I’d made a last-minute excuse to get out of the rehearsal dinner the night before and that day’s spa treatment and group hair appointment. When your husband has died, you’re allowed to just say, “I can’t make it. I’m so sorry.” If your husband died in a car accident, like mine, you’re allowed to say, “I just can’t drive today.” You can simply shake your head and whisper, “Sorry.” And people excuse you, immediately, as if this is the least they can do for you. And perhaps it is.
 
This was wearing on my sister, however. She’d made me promise that I would be at her house two hours before the wedding. There was a strict agenda that we had to stick to, and it included drinking mimosas with all of the bridesmaids while each gave an intimate little toast. Elysius likes it when the world finds her as its proper axis. I couldn’t judge her for that; I was painfully aware of how selfish my grief was. My eight-year-old son had lost his father. Henry’s parents had lost their son. And Henry lost his life. What right did I have to use Henry’s death as an excuse—time and again—to check out?
 
“Can I bring my snorkel stuff?” Abbot called down the hallway.
 
“Pack an overnight bag and bring the gear,” I said, shoving things into a small suitcase of my own. My sister lived only twenty minutes away—a quick ride from Tallahassee to the countryside in Capps—but she wanted family to spend the night. It was an opportunity to capture my mother’s attention and mine and hold it for as long as possible—to relive the strong bond the three of us had once had. “You can snorkel in the morning with Pop-pop.”
 
Abbot ran out of his bedroom, sliding down the hall to my doorway, still wearing his sports socks. He was holding the cummerbund in one hand and the clip-on bow tie in the other. “I can’t get these to stick on!” he said. His starched collar was sticking up by his cheeks, like the Halloween he dressed as Count Dracula.
 
“Don’t worry about it. Just bring it all.” I was fussing with the clasp of a string of pearls my mother had lent me for the occasion. “There will be ladies there with nervous energy and nothing to do. They’ll fix you up.”
 
“Where will you be?” he asked with an edge of anxiety in his voice. Since Henry’s death, Abbot had become a worrier. He’d started rubbing his hands together, a new tic—a little frenzy, the charade of a vigorous hand-washing. He’d become a germophobe. We’d seen a therapist, but it hadn’t helped. He did this when he was anxious and also when he sensed I was brooding. I tried not to brood in front him, but it turned out that I wasn’t good at faking chipper, and my fake chipperness made him more nervous than my brooding—a vicious cycle. Now that his father was gone, did he feel more vulnerable in the world? I did.
 
“I’ll be with the other bridesmaids doing mandatory bridesmaidish things,” I reassured him. It was at this moment that I remembered that I was supposed to have my toast prepared. I’d written a toast on a napkin in the kitchen and, of course, had since lost it and now couldn’t remember anything I’d written. “What nice things should I say about Auntie Elysius? I have to come up with something for a toast.”
 
“She has very white teeth and buys very good presents,” Abbot said.
 
“Beauty and generosity,” I said. “I can work with that. This is going to all be fine. We’re going to enjoy ourselves!”
 

Videos