Eat, Pray, Live.

That drive fueled her early writing career, before she crashed and burned over a man. Which then led to her trip, which led to her memoir, which led to the sudden wealth, fame, and cult of Liz, which has all landed her in …
 
Frenchtown? Swimming holes? In a dinky river village where she can walk down a hill from her house into town, say howdy to every stray boy in oversize swim trunks, grab her cappuccino, and check out the plodding old Delaware? This is the next leg of her story?
 
Yup. Liz landed here two years ago — just as the EPL phenomenon hit — to open a shop that sells exotic stuff she and her husband have collected from their travels all over: Buddhas, handmade canoes, teak back-scratchers, impossible-to-play musical instruments. (And yes, EPL devotees, the husband is Felipe — his real name is José — the courtly Brazilian she met in Bali whose parting of his bed’s mosquito net ended her two-year celibacy.)
 
Frenchtown? Absolutely. It’s her home. The place where Liz Gilbert is now quietly cooking up her next — and entirely ­different — act.
 

THE PATH TO Frenchtown was laid a long, long time ago, from Liz’s start as a writer. Two decades ago, at 22, just out of NYU, she was going to be the real thing, a writer. One who goes out into the world and meets characters and does exotic things and knocks the shit out of it, like Tom Wolfe or Cormac McCarthy. So she headed West with her pencils and notebooks, to a Wyoming dude ranch, to hang out with cowboys.
 
Here’s where things immediately started to get a little tangled up. Because she decided, for a moment there, that she was gonna be not only a writer, but a professional cowgirl, too. She laughs about it now. (“A fantastic act of fraudulence and performance,” she says.) She’s made fun of herself in print over her foolishness, how she went riding with a cowboy named Hank, who was a drunk and belligerent and couldn’t get out a declarative sentence without cursing. Of course, she adored him.
 
Hank told her, “You’re a really good rider, you know.” Really? Oh, that was the best compliment Liz had ever received. “It’s true,” he went on. “I wish I could express myself the way you do.”