Eight Months in Provence: A Junior Year Abroad 30 Years Late

Biographie de Diane Covington-Carter

Diane Covington-Carter calls herself a "late-bloomer baby-boomer" since she has accomplished so many interesting things when most people are considered "over the hill."In her late forties, she bought a run down apple farm in the foothills of the Sierras and took on restoring it and taking care of it, all on her own. At age fifty, she moved to France for eight months to do her "Junior Year Abroad Thirty Years Late" and had a fabulous time.
At sixty she fell in love with the man of her dreams, and they now live together on the apple farm and also in New Zealand, when they are not traveling around the world to other exotic and interesting places. She has published four books, two of which are award-winning.*GOLD AWARD:In 2018, her third memoir, "Finding Gilbert, A Promise Fulfilled, " won a Gold award from the Society of American Travel Writers Western Chapter.
It tells the true story of how she found her father's beloved French orphan, Gilbert, from World War II. Though it was fifty years late, he did become her 'brother' and she is still close to four generations of his family. The faculty at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, who judged the writing competition, had this to say about the book:"This is a gripping travel memoir of how childhood stories of World War II turn into a quest.
A lot of travel is driven by the quest for answers-and this book fulfills that desire to find the truth in faraway places. This piece about a father's love and fulfilling a promise to a French war orphan is well done, and a recommended read."*WILLA AWARDHer first historical Middle Grade/Young Adult novel, "Beautiful Courage, A Young Woman's Journey West, 2019, " was chosen as a finalist for a WILLA Award, 2020.
The award, is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winning author Willa Cather, one of America's foremost novelists, and honors the best in literature, featuring women's or girls' stories set in the West that are published each year. The judges are professional librarians, historians and university affiliated educators. This tender, coming of age story is told through the letters and journal of a young girl bound for California in 1852.*LOWELL THOMAS TRAVEL JOURNALISM AWARD, 2020Covington-Carter has received many awards for her travel journalism, most recently a prestigious Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism award for an essay in the Los Angeles Times for the 75th anniversary...