Two small villages in Provence that produce fine wines and delectable dishes also serve up a cast of colorful characters with secrets and feuds, loves and losses in “Amour Provence,” a new novel by Constance Leisure.

Originally from New York, where she was a magazine editor, Leisure and her husband and young children moved to Paris 25 years ago, where she started writing fiction and nonfiction about daily life in France. Before long, while traveling the country, they came upon a charming old farmhouse in a small wine village in Provence, which they purchased. It became the inspiration for Leisure’s first published novel.

Leisure is now stateside, spending part of the summer in Litchfield in an old house left to her by her grandmother. She will give a talk and do a book signing at Bank Square Books in Mystic on July 27. The following is a recent Day interview with the author.

Q. As a baby boomer in a youth culture, you give us hope that it’s never too late to publish a first novel. Why did you wait until after you turned 60?

A. I was a writer since I was a teenager, but I started writing fiction more seriously in France. I wrote three novels that took place in the U.S. that were never published. This one took about three years to write. It suddenly clicked what I’d absorbed about living in the south of France — the vineyards, vintners and the way they live and present their wines; the neighbors who have certain ways of inviting people over for meals that last for four hours; and how important the natural world is, especially in the south, where people are connected with the land. After writing all those dreary American stories, this story was really anchored in something real.

Q. How and when did the characters and the storyline — spanning 70 years from the Nazi occupation — come to you? Are these eclectic characters based on people you know in France?

A. I was inspired by things people said, and they would stay in my mind and I would ruminate about them. One in particular was my elderly neighbor, who told me that the Nazis had occupied her house in 1944. She was about 14. I asked her what was it like living in a house occupied by Nazis at that tender age when she was just developing as a woman. She said they were ‘perfectly correct.’ In France that means just on the edge of being not perfectly correct. It must have been a rough time for her, but she didn’t want to go any further. I began reading books about France during the occupation — it developed in that way.

Q. You say that life in the south of France is often filled with drama, as reflected in your novel. Why is that?

A. People have an idea of Provence as ‘the land of milk and honey’ but it can be awfully rude in the summer, so hot you can’t go outside in the middle of the day and in winter absolutely bone-chilling mistral wind blows down from the north. And so people’s lives as a result are often quite dramatic, full of joy and full of difficulty — at the mercy of the elements … I didn’t realize until after I wrote the novel that each character is represented as a different permutation of life: sexual, maternal, paternal, platonic, love and love’s opposite at times, too — hatred.

Q. Wine and food play an important role in your novel. Is it because eating and drinking well — the local economy being based on wine — is so integral to life in Provence?

A. I think it’s part of that sensual life of France, being connected to the land, loving nature, and then wine and food just come naturally into that. In certain places where you make a fancy meal and it’s appreciated, these people don’t make such an effort on food and it’s an easy relaxed thing — a way of sharing with your neighbors, just like you share stories of your own life. People don’t guzzle wine so much as say, ‘Oh, I’d like you to try this wine by a neighbors who’s trying this new technique.’ It’s not so much drinking the wine as the aesthetics of it that you taste and appreciate.

There’s (also) a lot of home cooking. In the chapter where the woman comes home and smells her mother’s Daube de boeuf —a long-cooked beef stew with a little ‘extra’ — that can often start off a conversation at a meal with people talking about different ways their families make it and then segueing into politics and art and neighbors.

Q. Do you cook? What are your favorite dishes to cook/eat when you’re in Provence?

A. I’ve always been interested in cooking, but I learned a lot from French friends. We cook together a lot, and I also have some terrific French cookbooks. I cook with zucchini, eggplant and tomatoes. I often make ratatouille in different ways, and I love to make different eggplant dishes. We grill a lot when the weather is good. Marseilles is nearby and has a big fish market on an old port. A favorite is turbot, a large white fish like flounder, but bigger — cooked on the grill, which is great. There’s an African market in Marseilles that I like a lot also, where I get (ingredients) to make couscous. I like to make fish couscous or tangine. The way we love Chinese food (in the U.S.), the French love North-African food.

Q. What is the most important thing you learned about preparing food and eating well while living in France?

A. One of main things is the products are so good; when you buy a chicken, it’s real farm chicken that’s been eating in the fields and running around instead of a chicken raised with hundreds of chickens that never get out in the sunshine. That’s true of a lot of the produce, whether it’s lamb or beef. The vegetables are really good, most of the year. And people are willing to pay extra few euros for (such things as) a really good cheese.

“Amour Provence” (Simon & Schuster) by Constance Leisure is $16, softcover.

IF YOU GO

What: Talk and book signing with Constance Leisure

When: Wednesday, July 27, noon to 1:30 p.m.

Where: Bank Square Books, 53 E. Main St., Mystic

Cost: Tickets are $25 and include a copy of the book. Register online at www.banksquarebooks.com or call the bookstore at (860) 536-3795.