By Megan Harlan
Bienvenue!
Welcome to The France House, a website and newsletter about making a second home and a (more) creative life. I’m an award-winning essayist and author based in California and France. My life-in-France began in June 2021, when my partner and I first visited the house we’d bought in Brittany during the pandemic—without ever stepping foot in it.
As pretty deliberate and financially conservative people, it’s by far the wildest purchase we’ve ever made. We’d finalized our written offer on the house in September 2020—the flat-lining heart of the Covid lock-down, and the same month my book, Mobile Home: A Memoir in Essays, about growing up in 17 homes and across four continents, was published. As anyone who’s read it knows: I have a complicated relationship with home. But I’ve long yearned for a permanent “second location” in a country I adore and could easily spend the rest of my life exploring. A home like this could open up another, fuller way to live, while offering so many opportunities for my son, my family, and myself to grow, create, and contribute. For these and other reasons, instead of upgrading our California house’s kitchen, we bought a historical house in Brittany.
The France House explores what it’s like to live in two homes, cultures, and countries. It’s for readers drawn to French life and travel, inspiration and the arts, writing and other creativities, architecture and interior design, history and how its cultural imprints live on today, what builds and sustains a good “quality of life,” and choosing the unexpected path.
A Brief Tour of The France House
All pieces grouped into one of these three subjects:
If you’d like to learn the story of the search, purchase, and reasons for The France House, the first five pieces are a good place to start:
Dream House: On dreaming with a destination in mind.
Second Home Search: On finding a new part of the world to call home.
Choosing Dinan: On discovering Dinan and the pleasures of a walled medieval French city.
The Castle Anecdote: On naming and valuing a good quality of life.
No Renovations: On the joys of not renovating a house in France.
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Merci!
Thank you for visiting, and wishing you the best in all your travels! Bien amicalement, Megan xx
