Published in France in 1977 as Une Soupe aux Herbes Sauvages, this autobiography of a peasant woman reared in the stony insularity of a tiny Alpine village reveals the unfolding of a formidable person. Carles, born in 1900, writes of her life in the mountains coountry of southern France as comprising "so many different things, funny or tragic, picturesque or cruel." She takes the reader into her beloved Claree Valley where she as a young child in a motherless family labored alongside her father in the fields; it is where her schooling began and where she recognized her intelligence as the key to the outer world. Primitive village life and the patriarchal though loving structure of her family are background for Carles's full, nonconformist life as teacher, farmer, mother, feminist and political activist. The memoir brings to life a captivating woman Originally published in France as Une Soupe aux Herbes Sauvages (1977), this is the memoir of a mountain peasant born at the turn of the century who was lucky and persevering enough to finish school, work in Paris, attend the Sorbonne, and become a schoolteacher. Carles married an intellectually inclined housepainter, and they returned to her village in the Alps of southeastern France to raise their family. Her tales demonstrate some of the political and social conflicts of modern French life, and her descriptions of her childhood and adolescence in a rigidly conservative patriarchal society are especially moving. Unfortunately, her later stories in the rest of the book become more mundane and less engaging. Not a necessary purchase. - Gwen Gregory, U.S. Courts Lib., Phoenix, Ariz. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. Carles autobiography is the tale of a world that has largely disappeared and of the one that emerged to take its place. Her account reflects the turbulent history of the twentieth century from the viewpoints of the many roles she played in it--teacher, farmer, feminist, pacifist, and political activist. Avriel H. Goldberger is Professor of French and Chair of the department at Hofstra University. She is the author of many articles on French literature and of Visions of a New Hero. Her edition and translation of Corinne, or Italy (the first new English edition of the work in nearly a hundred years) was also published by Rutgers University Press