Wallace - The French house: an American family, a ruined maison, and the village that restored them all

It swims offshore like a fat sole fried in butter, but its bones are blue-green granite.

It is located ten miles out in the Atlantic from the coast of Brittany, in what is called the Bay of Biscay.

Its golden fields are held aloft by sharp-toothed, bone-shattering cliffs, like an offering to older gods.

One hundred fifty-two little villages, most amounting to only a half dozen houses, bask in valleys cut by trickling creeks or huddle in the lee of low knolls.

Each village has its own personality and schedule and history. Each has a cow. Each has a mystery. ( Who owns that cow? )

Each village also shares a daily rhythm with everything else here, because of the way the island breathes with the tides. All of it, farm and beach and rockbound coast, drawbridge and fishing boat and mud-burrowing clam, the wiggling sardines soon to become the daily special on the chalkboard outside the crperie Guerveur, even the lines of wobbling tourist cyclists clogging the island lanesall seem to wax and wane, rise and fall, along with the seas inhalation and exhalation, those sweeping tides that come twice a day, twice at night.

Its beautiful here, often dramatically so.

But, as always, beauty comes at a cost. There are too many tourists in July and August, although theyre good for the local economy. There is pressure to build on open farmland to accommodate development. Pollution is a problem, mostly from outmoded septic systems. Young people cant find jobs to suit their education level and feel they must move to the Continent. As my wife, Mindy, knows from leaving her native Hawaii, this can be painful: its never quite the same after you go away.

There is an ancient and unresolved drama revolving around the island. It looks postcard-pretty upon arrival at Le Palais, the walled port on the protected side that faces the French mainland. It presents a brave face on its western coast, too, the aptly named Cte Sauvage. But it is trapped in an abusive relationship with the treacherous Bay of Biscay, taking the brunt of whatever mood the sea is in. Cliffs crumble, dark masses of seaweed cover the beaches, rows of cypresses fall, ripping up the earth with their roots. Fishermen and tourists are washed away to become crab bait. Early in the morning after a storm, the island tries to convince you that its bruises mean nothing, calling your attention instead to the sun-kissed mists and drifts of spume, taller than a man, that collect in the coves and creeks. The shadow of violence in her eyes haunts you, however. Never turn your back on the sea .

But the island is also gentled by the warming tickle of the tail end of the Gulf Stream. It gets a lot of sunshine, less rain than the Continent, and periods of scintillating glassy calm that, in summer, occasionally peak in what the local Bellilois call beau temps : a day or two of warm, windless clarity and peace, almost psychedelic in nature, when orb spiders weave tapestries of bedewed diamonds along the valley path, shiny green lizards dart underfoot, and people talk in whispers out of an instinctive awe and reverence.

In other words, it is called Belle le for a reason.