Bøker av Elizabeth Birkelund

"Ilse Lund is a French translator who lives in a beach house on stilts set on a remote spit of land off the west coast of Greenland. Restless from from the predictability of life in her quaint cottage and her isolated world circumscribed by the sea, Ilse convinces her French publisher to pay for a trip to the country whose language she translates but has never visited--France. Her mission: to translate the verses of an elderly Provenðcal poet known as "the last living troubadour of Provence." Settling into the poet's medieval village of Beau Riviere, perched atop the rocky slopes of the French Alps, Ilse falls under the hypnotic spell of the Provenðcal way of life--and of the free-associating, charming, French poet. As she soaks up the sensuous warm air, the vibrant spring colors, and the dulcet sounds of the Provenðcal dialect, a daily rhythm develops, word-by-word, between the poet and his translator. Their warm camaraderie is disturbed, however, when the poet's son shows up. Though he has a fiancâee back in Paris, he turns his full attention on Ilse, and suddenly she is forced to learn another language, one her translation skills have not prepared her to decode. Questioning where and with whom her future lies, Ilse fears she has lost sight of her true North"--

Three beautiful French sisters entrust an American hiker with the mission of rescuing their mother high in the Alps. But what if she doesn’t want to be found?Recently fired from his high-powered finance job and dumped by his fiancée, Jim Olsen has come to the Swiss Alps to clear his head. At the charming Cabane des Audannes, he meets Clio, Thalia, and Helene Castellane, who are on a quest of their own: their mother, Calliope, has fled to these mountains to escape her philandering politician husband’s most recent scandal. As snow threatens to descend upon the Alps, the women have come to bring their mother home.But the sisters are at the point of surrender; it is time for them to return to Paris. Buoyed by wine and inspired by their beauty, Jim impetuously volunteers to assume their search, but soon realizes that he is in over his head. The Alps are filled with beauty and danger, not the least of which is Calliope’s desire to stay hidden. And all the while Jim finds himself haunted by the memory of her daughters and conflicted in his desire for them. . . .