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by Cécile Ganne (Author)
If you were enchanted by the sensory magic of Chocolat by Joanne Harris, the pastoral nostalgia of A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, or the elemental beauty of Paolo Cognetti's The Eight Mountains, you'll be swept away by Cécile Ganne's Scent of a Truffle.
Scent of a Truffle: Mischief and Legacy in the Dordogne Valley weaves a rich, earthy portrait of Calignac, a sun-drenched French village whose limestone cliffs and elusive truffles evoke a deeper, timeless legacy-a place with more than a few secrets. And for Adèle Montfort, the village's aging matriarch, her ancestral land and way of life is increasingly under attack. With her health fading and her granddaughter Mathilde growing distant, she's determined to pass along nature's hidden wisdom before it's too late.
When a power-hungry mayor threatens the village's historic fabric and heritage pilgrimage sites, Adèle faces more than a bureaucratic battle to save what's truly valuable. As the annual Fête de la Truffe approaches, poachers seem to stir unrest amongst the villagers, and a trapped fox becomes a powerful emblem of all that is sacred in the woods-and slipping away.
Written with luminous prose and a painter's eye, this novella is a sensuous ode to the earthly treasures that lie just beneath the surface. Inspired by the author's childhood in the Dordogne Valley-with its bustling markets, ribbons of red tilled earth, and the soft hush of poplar-lined rivers-Scent of a Truffle is both a love letter to a vanishing way of life and a call to preserve our most cherished roots.
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Cécile Ganne is a French-born writer, painter, and professor whose life bridges two worlds: the ancient rhythms of the Dordogne Valley and the creative hum of Boston's art scene. Raised in a village nestled between the Lascaux caves and Rocamadour, she grew up painting with her grandmother, gathering walnuts, and hunting truffles with her grandfather on misty winter mornings. These sensory memories and ancestral ties deeply inform her debut novella, Scent of a Truffle.
After moving to the United States, Cécile earned a Ph.D. from Boston University and now teaches French language and literature at Wellesley College. When not writing or teaching, she can be found in her SoWa Boston's South End studio creating contemplative artwork or leading art meditation ateliers. Whether on the page or canvas, her work explores cultural legacy and the sensuality of place.
