Place Called Arden: A Memoir of Art and Belonging

For readers of Under the Tuscan Sun and The Art of Gathering, a memoir of moving into a century-old arts village and discovering that community isn't found, it's built.

When painter Jill Althouse-Wood encounters the intentional arts village of Arden, Delaware, she resolves to live there. It isn’t just the wooded setting, winding paths, or storybook cottages. She is drawn to its culture—where artists fling open their studio doors, Shakespeare defines summer, international musicians perform, and the village gathers weekly for savory repasts cooked by neighbors in turn.

But after buying a home in Arden, Jill discovers that community is far more demanding than it appears from the outside. Belonging is not bestowed upon newcomers like a welcome basket. Jill must earn her place—through heated town meetings, forest clean-ups, difficult conversations, and, eventually, her own turn cooking dinner for 120 neighbors in the village hall kitchen.

As the seasons turn, Arden works a deeper kind of enchantment—becoming a living experiment in what happens when people repeatedly choose participation over convenience and presence over isolation. Arden stretches Jill past the edges of her comfort and, in the process, transforms both woman and village. Part memoir, part antidote to modern loneliness, A Place Called Arden explores how communities shape us—and how we, in turn, help shape them.