Le Petit Jardin de L’âme began as a memoir of a couple’s cross-cultural experiment in retirement and chronicles the years 2005 to 2012. While telling the tale of adjusting to life in France it became clear that there is a larger context, beyond life in France, to life anywhere, and a people’s bright-side and their shadow-side. 

The title, Le Petit Jardin de L’âme, reflects an inner-space as much as a geographical location. Although this book is about experiences of 2005 to 2012, upon reflection, it is prescient of the cultural phenomena of the era of Post Truth / Post Fact that has come of age in the second decade of this millennium. Indeed, Le Petit Jardin de L’âme sheds some light on how we live our lives among our ghosts of the past, re-writes of history, denials of inconvenient truths, faux logic, and “alternative facts” in 2017 and beyond.         

After establishing careers in the church, in America’s corporate-life, in Chicago Real Estate and after twenty-five years of marriage, Val Littman and his wife Linda Korolewski were ready for a change.  They decided to exchange their accumulated Master’s degrees in Divinity, Theology, Public Health and Clinical Social Work, along with their professional licenses, certifications, and their Chicago urban lifestyle for life in the south of France.

Formed by their experience in religious life, ministry, teaching, psychology and social work, Val and Linda bring to their new life and to this book a perceptive, prayerful, carefully considered, and often comical view of la vie en France.

Born in 1948 Linda and Val are among the Baby-Boomer generation that has often pushed the cultural envelope, crossing over to living their lives in new ways.  Their early retirement at age 53 puts them at the edge of many in that generation who will be living out their own dreams of a good-life in the “The Third-Age”, and the growing trend of international living.

Their first book, A Bright Sun & Long Shadows is a candid reflection on the glorious and gruesome realities of creating a new life in France.  In this second book, Le Petit Jardin de L’âme, Val continues the story and opens to you, the reader, the heart of a struggle that affected, his life, their marriage, and the church congregation that grew up around them.   Each book can be read separately or sequentially as a chronology of the twelve years of life in France.