Whether it's a weekend home, a shady retreat out in the garden, or just the memory of a summer spent at the beach, many of us associate a specific place with a feeling of getting away from it all. It's a place one goes to feel removed from the stresses of modern life and leaves feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.

Of course, your idea of a getaway depends on your definition of relaxation, and Chris Casson Madden's Getaways serves up a variety of exemplary, sometimes lavish, retreats, such as a 58-foot boat; a family farm with a menagerie of horses, ducks, geese, and goats; and a compound in the Hudson River Valley with its own natural waterfall. Several celebrity getaways are featured as well, including Michael Keaton's cabin on his Montana dude ranch, a boathouse on the Hudson River that serves as Toni Morrison's creative inspiration, and Katie Couric's country home.

Not all of Casson's getaways are the typical weekend or summer homes. Some are year-round retreats or even special rooms within a home. Donna Kaplan's re-created 19th-century French bathroom, with its antique glass perfume bottles, tapered candles, and fireplace, leaves her well rested after a long soak in the cast-iron tub. Lynn von Kersting and Richard Irving's Sunset Boulevard home has a pool and a porch filled with bohemian furnishings, cozy paper lanterns and candles, and lush tropical flowers and plants--a perfect spot for entertaining friends. Bob Levenson's garden getaway is a backyard arbor consisting of four intertwined gingko trees layered with clematis and climbing roses.

These imaginatively decorated and diverse retreats should inspire those with beach houses, cabins, and the like to consider how the elements of a "getaway" can be incorporated into their second home. And those currently without a getaway may be motivated to simply set aside a room or space outdoors that can serve as a sanctuary from busy otherworlds. --Kris Law


Book Description
A haven, a retreat, a special place that offers a sense of sanctuary--this is a getaway. And as Chris Casson Madden discovers in her beautiful new book, a getaway can be found in myriad forms and in varied locations. Whether it's a log cabin in the mountains, an elegant villa by the sea, or even a cozy suburban house lived in year-round, a true getaway encourages family gatherings and personal renewal.
        
In Getaways: Carefree Retreats for All Seasons, Chris celebrates the easygoing spirit that creates such havens. She uncovers a harbor hideaway on a New England island, a one-room cottage by the race tracks of Saratoga Springs, a sleek farmhouse in the Malibu hills, and a Hudson Valley treehouse built for two little girls by their father. Other delightful retreats include a fragrant garden arbor in a Long Island backyard, a fifty-year-old yacht moored off the coast of California, and Chris's own stone house in the suburbs of New York. She visits the private escapes of renowned architects, designers, and artists, as well as the weekend homes of Katie Couric, Michael Keaton, and Toni Morrison. Along the way, Chris discusses the importance of creating a getaway to our physical and spiritual well-being. She also reveals the simple design elements that can inspire a feeling of comfort and warmth in any house.
        
In describing her rebuilt boathouse, Toni Morrison speaks of "a vision of a place you've had in your mind and when you find yourself there, you recognize it." With more than two hundred glorious photographs, Getaways captures the essence of that vision and encourages readers to add its richness to their own homes.


From the Inside Flap
A haven, a retreat, a special place that offers a sense of sanctuary--this is a getaway. And as Chris Casson Madden discovers in her beautiful new book, a getaway can be found in myriad forms and in varied locations. Whether it's a log cabin in the mountains, an elegant villa by the sea, or even a cozy suburban house lived in year-round, a true getaway encourages family gatherings and personal renewal.
        
In Getaways: Carefree Retreats for All Seasons, Chris celebrates the easygoing spirit that creates such havens. She uncovers a harbor hideaway on a New England island, a one-room cottage by the race tracks of Saratoga Springs, a sleek farmhouse in the Malibu hills, and a Hudson Valley treehouse built for two little girls by their father. Other delightful retreats include a fragrant garden arbor in a Long Island backyard, a fifty-year-old yacht moored off the coast of California, and Chris's own stone house in the suburbs of New York. She visits the private escapes of renowned architects, designers, and artists, as well as the weekend homes of Katie Couric, Michael Keaton, and Toni Morrison. Along the way, Chris discusses the importance of creating a getaway to our physical and spiritual well-being. She also reveals the simple design elements that can inspire a feeling of comfort and warmth in any house.
        
In describing her rebuilt boathouse, Toni Morrison speaks of "a vision of a place you've had in your mind and when you find yourself there, you recognize it." With more than two hundred glorious photographs, Getaways captures the essence of that vision and encourages readers to add its richness to their own homes.


About the Author
Chris Casson Madden is the author of many best-selling Clarkson Potter books. The host of HGTV's Interiors by Design, she is a frequent guest on Later Today, The Today Show, and Oprah, and she writes a syndicated column on interior design for the Scripps Howard News Service. Chris is also the designer of the Chris Madden Collection--a line of furniture inspired by the concept of  "getaways," produced and distributed by Bassett Furniture. She lives with her husband and two sons in Westchester County, New York, and goes to her getaway in Vermont as often as possible.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
When I traveled around the country talking to readers about my last book, A Room of Her Own: Women's Personal Spaces, I was struck by how many women told me they had created--or yearned to create--a personal space, a private sanctuary for themselves in their homes. The concept of a personal space struck a deeply responsive chord with so many women, which seemed to cut across all demographic boundaries--age, geography, whatever.

But as I talked to people, it also became increasingly clear to me that the need for a haven, a retreat, is a universal one. Families, couples, and singles--regardless of gender--share this almost primal urge to have what began to take shape in my mind as a "getaway." Suddenly, and with a sense of energizing enthusiasm, I was on to a new project--Getaways.

As I do with all my books, I got on the phone, sent out letters, and faxed friends and designers asking them if they had or knew of a getaway, a special place that offered a sense of sanctuary. I was thrilled to receive a huge and enthusiastic response to my queries. Some wrote eloquently about their homes on the water, whether this was the ocean, a lake, or a small harbor. Others submitted wonderful photographs of shacks in the mountains or secluded cottages. I found that a getaway did not have to be a second home: many had created one in their primary home or apartment right in the midst of the city.

Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning author whose home I was privileged to photograph, eloquently captured the essence of a getaway. "It's a vision of a place you've had in your mind," Toni told me, "and when you find yourself there, you recognize it." I discovered eye-pleasing spaces that came in a dazzling variety of guises, from the Donahue family's charming boat basin in Rye, New York (which has been in the family for three generations), to actor Michael Keaton's fishing shack in the Rockies to Los Angeles designer Lynn von Kersting's secluded pool and pavilion snuggled above the clamor of Sunset Boulevard. Katie Couric let me photograph her elegantly relaxed home in upstate New York, where she and her daughters escape on weekends from her hectic schedule at NBC. I traveled out to the end of eastern Long Island where Walter Iooss, Jr., the well-known sports photographer, and his wife Eva opened their incredible home to me on the Montauk cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

A very talented designer, Sarah Smith, gave me and my photographer access to several exquisite getaways on a small island off the Connecticut coastline, where three or four generations of families gather each summer. The design philosophy there was very much one of relaxed comfort. Sand-filled Top-Siders and water-soaked golden retrievers were welcome in any room of the house!

The discovery of a getaway, I found, often has the characteristics of an epiphany. Renate McKnight and her artist-husband, Tom, owned homes in New York and Palm Beach but were visiting friends in bucolic Litchfield County in Connecticut when they drove past a stately old Colonial house on Litchfield's Main Street. As Tom told me, "We both knew it was the house we wanted." They contacted a local real estate agent and have now lovingly restored and renovated this wonderful home.

Jennifer and James D'Auria told me a similar tale about the discovery of their getaway. New Yorkers through the week, Jennifer is an actress and James an architect. They had a small weekend house on eastern Long Island but both had a very clear vision of the house and property they yearned for. One night, while driving in a wild rainstorm, Jennifer spotted a For Sale sign on a piece of land. As Jennifer said, "The country road was right, the hills were right." She drove back, got James, and, as you'll see, created an exquisite home in the potato fields of Amagansett.

Time and again, the owners of the spaces I photographed reiterated the sentiment that Toni Morrison had expressed to me, that feeling of "coming home." Whenever we find this place--whether at the beach, in the country, or in our everyday homes--I know that we can add a richness to our wondrous but sometimes hectic lives by following our vision and creating a getaway of our own.

FROM THE PUBLISHER