The Pelee Project: One Woman's Escape from Urban Madness

It took me a long time to get a copy of this book. Jane makes you feel that you are actually there with her descriptive words. Educational, soul searching and entertaining from beginning to end. Although I wish I could take a similar journey, I am not brave enough at this time to undertake one. Jane, as long as you keep writing, I will keep reading. Thank you.

This is an excellent read for anyone who needs some inspiration. Very entertaining and filled with insights and bits of wisdom. You will want to keep it on hand for reference again and again. The author has done a very fine job of chronicling her experience. I highly recommend it!

I came to this book to learn more about life on Pelee Island, knowing full well that this was incidental to the author's purpose. I got what I was looking for: a vivid sense of life on that island during the off-season and a well-crafted, sympathetic portrayal of its inhabitants.But I was not indifferent to Jane Christmas's purpose: to take a sabbatical from urban life (viz., her high-powered career as an editor with the National Post), to share what she had learned from the experience, and to say something about spiritual retreats in general. Did I learn something from it? Yes -- though I'm not starting from the power-career-long-commute-single-parent position she did, and that brings me to the following point. Readers who cannot identify with her Manolo Blahniks-buying past self will have a tougher time relating to or appreciating her experience; they may well be impatient with her discoveries of what would be patently obvious to some. In a sense, her target audience is her past self: there's nothing wrong with that, but it means that what you get from this book will depend in large part on how much you have in common with her.Nevertheless, it's easy to root for Christmas as she spends several months on Pelee Island. It's a great story: she arrives as a fish out of water, and gradually learns to breathe the local air. It's worth reading on that basis alone.