October Summary and Analysis

October is gloriously comfortable: warm enough to swim during the day, and cool enough at night for great sleeping. October is also the beginning of mushroom season. Peter meets a man dressed in very strange gear, a rubber boot on one foot, a running shoe on the other, and he is wielding a stick. The man explains that the boot protects him from the dangerous snakes that live in the area. The mushrooms he is collecting look poisonous to Peter but are, in fact, edible. He also tells Peter that, on a daily basis, people bring their baskets of fungus into the pharmacy to get an educated answer on whether they are safe to eat or not.

The Mayles also learn more about bread than they ever before thought there was to know about, what in France, is as much as...