That Shining Place

June M. Blurton is a retired speech pathologist.

Reading That Shining Place makes this reviewer want to visit Crete.
While backpacking through Europe in the 1960s, the author stayed in a
fishing village on the island of Crete. Few tourists had visited the
island over the previous four centuries, and probably little had changed
in that time, so the advent of a young blonde woman among the locals
created quite a stir. During her stay, Poirier-Bures was befriended by
Maria, a fisherman’s wife who approached life with passion. Maria
introduced Simone to Greek cooking, dancing, and hospitality, and
overlooked Poirier-Bures’s foreign ways. Not everyone, however, was
equally broad-minded. One of the difficulties Poirier-Bures encountered
was the difference in attitude Greeks held toward young unmarried women;
such activities as dancing with sailors in the tavernas and sharing a
house with an artist Poirier-Bures never saw—both socially acceptable
behaviors in Canada—were unacceptable to the islanders. This led to
Poirier-Bures’s abrupt departure. But she never forgot Maria.
Twenty-five years later, Poirier-Bures returned to the village; she
found it changed and modernized, but still enchanting. Her stories, in
this delightful memoir, about the people of Crete, their way of life,
and the sights, smells, and sounds of the island are equally enchanting.