Thyme in my Pocket

My new book, Thyme in my Pocket, Moments in the south of France in word and watercolor

Here is the cover of my new book I wrote and published this summer with Illumina Press!  It was a wonderful creative experience to paint the watercolors, write the prose, and design the whole book.  I am back in le Gard for two months with my husband hiking, biking, baking tartes, painting, and playing fiddle…en vacance!  I thought this was a good time to post about my book.  Available on Amazon and very soon through Ingram.   Below is a description of the of book and endoresments from the back cover.

Moments in the south of France in word and watercolor

 by Alison Johnston

Thyme in my Pocket is a visual memoir of four splendid seasons spent in the rural French countryside. In word and watercolor, artist and writer Alison Johnston takes the reader on an intimate journey home to a country of heart, to a sense of place. In the tiny stone villages of southern France, she lived her dream, born during a six week summer art study in nineteen seventy-nine where she contracted “La maladie des pierres”. Translated as falling helplessly in love with stone, within which one lives and breathes and creates in these timeless villages, she has happily never recovered. For a magical year she and her cycling husband and musical son lived, wrote, painted and played, nurtured by the art, language, music, and most significantly, the cross-cultural friendships which blossomed.

“After reading Alison Johnston’s beautiful artistic memoir, “Thyme in my Pocket”, I felt magically transported to France. Her journey through words painted for me a reminiscing that only someone who had spent time there could make sound so alive, so real. Alison’s seasonal paintings depict the sensibility of place and moment. I cannot recommend this book enough. Fabulous work. “Thyme in my Pocket” is a book worthy of the finest cocktail tables.”

—Susan Wingate, Award-winning Author and Amazon Bestseller of “Drowning” and the “Bobby’s Diner Series”

“In ‘Thyme in my Pocket’, scenes of French country life come alive as Alison shares her impressions of the Gard, via watercolors, sketches and stories which honor the history and the beauty of the region. I enjoyed learning little nuggets of France’s past while ambling, paragraph by paragraph, through the countryside with this poetic artist.”

—Kristin Espinasse, author of “Blossoming in Provence,” “Words in a French Life”, and the French Word-A-Day blog

“Alison’s book reminds me of the spring I lived in Provence. The umber cliffs and the smells and the poetry of the warm winds come rushing back as I turn the pages.”

—Jim Lawrence, author of “Callused Hands Hungry Heart”

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