Café Oc
By Beebe Bahrami (MCDBio'86)
(Shanti Arts Publishing, 255 pages; 2016)
Writer, anthropologist, and self-professing nomad Beebe Bahrami knows that walking and exploring are paramount to her sense of connection to the earth. One of her explorations took her to a small fishing village in northwestern Spain and a much-anticipated chance to walk once again but on new tributaries the pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago. But it was a side trip to Sarlat in southwestern France, a place called "the Frenchman's paradise" by author Henry Miller, that unexpectedly gave Bahrami much to explore and enjoy as the region worked its way into the author's heart.
A travel narrative and memoir, Café Oc will delight readers with its tantalizing descriptions of French foods and wines, walks through the countryside, visits to the prehistoric painted and engraved caves, and the warm and welcoming people in the Dordogne region of France. It will also take them along a path of serendipity and magic, and a meditation into how we are pulled by the desire for home. Accompanied by photographs taken by the author, Café Oc is also a pictorial record of places, people, and events. Over time and several lengthy visits, Bahrami found a surprising desire to settle down, to leave her "tent poles anchored in place to that precious earth."