A Bright Sun & Long Shadows began as a memoir of a couple’s cross-cultural experiment in retirement. 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 culture’s bright-side and its shadow-side. Although this book was written in 2007, about experiences in the early 2000’s, 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, A Bright Sun & Long Shadows sheds some light on how we live our lives among ghosts of the past, re-writes of history, denials of inconvenient truths, faux logic, and “alternative facts”. The journey of A Bright Sun & Long Shadows applies to life 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 J. Littman and Linda S. 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, social work, and psychology, they 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.

Enjoy, this candid reflection on the glorious and gruesome realities of creating a new life in France.  A Bright Sun & Long Shadows takes you beyond la vie en rose in the south of France to explore the brilliance and the shadow-side of life in the Midi.