Ten Days in Greece

A beautifully illustrated and intimate account of an artist’s life-changing visit to a small village in Greece.

What happens when a successful artist and entrepreneur who thrives on the hustle of cosmopolitan Toronto is plunked down into a remote mountain village in Greece? When best-laid plans—to research a book about her husband’s family origins—are confounded by a profoundly slower, simpler, more mindful way of life? When an artist discovers that her usual means of expression, paint, feels inadequate, and so must turn to the power of language to convey these life-changing experiences? And when a woman in the throes of midlife and its challenges is confronted full-on by timeless lessons of impermanence and gratitude?

In Ten Days in Greece, Virginia Johnson recounts her life-changing visit to her husband’s family in Greece where she discovers a way of life that calls into question all of her assumptions about how to live. Beautifully written with lyrical honesty, this memoir—a journal, really, organized day by day—is an easy, insightful, and entertaining read, packed with moments of reflection and humor and peppered throughout with dreamy watercolor art.

It’s a beautiful lesson that we’re always changing and evolving, that nothing is permanent, that we are not living the only way to be, and that each day is a blessing. For women especially in mid-life, it tells a deeply relatable story.