THE STONES OF BALAZUC

Loving literary postcard of a picturesque village that appears to grow from the limestone cliffs towering above the Ardèche River in southeastern France.

Merriman (History/Yale Univ.) fashions here an appealing blend of meticulous scholarship and popular narrative. For example, a brief explanation of his initial fascination with the modern village is followed by a description of the nearby cave drawings created 32,000 years ago, the oldest ever discovered. After sketching the terrain, he begins his affectionate chronicle around a.d. 1000, when the first settlers arrived and established “a fortified village.” He then records virtually every moment of significance in Balazuc’s history: storms, floods, crop failures, wars, and wolf attacks. (The author accepts uncritically the story that in 1767, wolves killed 83 people in the area.) Most interesting is Merriman’s lucid account of the emergence of the silk industry after eager 19th-century entrepreneurs planted myriad mulberry trees in and around Balazuc. For a while, the industry transformed the economy: people had jobs, made money, lived reasonably well. But arboreal disease and waning demand eventually took their toll, and the village went through a period of long decline in population and prosperity; only 211 people were living there in 1975. Merriman also records important moments in popular culture—construction of churches and a bridge, the arrival of the first passenger train, telephone, and toilet (the latter not until the mid-20th century)—and follows the fortunes of residents through the Napoleonic era and two world wars. Winemaking is now an important industry there, but the new golden goose is tourism; in the summer, the population of Balazuc balloons to 1,000 and will no doubt inflate even more once this book appears.

Lengthy accounts of local politics will strain readers’ attention spans, but the author’s animating affection makes his text for the most part thoroughly engaging. (15 photographs and 1 map, not seen)