Debra Pickett

Dressed in a boldly designed jacket and clearly enthralled with a mahogany-and-velvet environment that is far more abundant than simple, Ban Breathnach continues with a sigh, "it was like a boyfriend you see every time you come to the city --"

"The kind of boyfriend," I ask, "who you know is all wrong for you?"

"Oh, yes," she responds enthusiastically, drawing out the syllables to indicate that there is really no other kind of boyfriend worth having.

Ban Breathnach (it's "Bon Brannock") knows that obvious luxuries like the apartment and the jacket don't exactly go along with the sweet, slightly countrified image of an author who once invited readers to "pick up the needle . . . and make the first stitch on the canvas of your life."

"Women definitely expected Laura Ashley," she says ruefully.

'It couldn't have been me'

Ten years later, Ban Breathnach is finally telling the story of what it was like to become an overnight sensation after 25 years of writing.

Her new book, Moving On (Meredith Books, 284 pages, $24.95), chronicles the strange disconnect she felt at being an ambassador for simplicity but living a life so crazed with publicity and obligations that she hired nine assistants to help manage everything.

It was, she says, almost an out-of-body experience. "When the book first took off," she recalls, "and there was this explosion of attention, I often felt like I wanted to turn around and see who everyone was talking about. Because it couldn't have been me."

Ban Breathnach wants to make clear that she truly believed -- and still believes -- in the philosophies espoused in Simple Abundance, in making time to take care of oneself, in making conscious choices, and expressing gratitude and not getting caught up in material things. It was just that she found it very difficult to actually live in keeping with those principles when she was also living as an Oprah-endorsed multimedia celebrity.

"Sometimes," she says, "it was as if everything was in a foreign language, like I was reading one thing and pronouncing it another way."

Readers, attracted by the conversational tone of Simple Abundance, felt like they knew Ban Breathnach, whom they always addressed, confidentially, as Sarah. They had stories to tell her and rushed to her side at every appearance -- and when they happened to spot her at the grocery store -- to share their tales of lives transformed and authentic selves rediscovered by embracing simplicity. It all got, well, rather complicated.

And things got even messier when Ban Breathnach's marriage ended and the many Web-based chat rooms dedicated to her work suddenly filled with gossip and speculation about her separation and divorce.

"Simple Abundance is who I really am," she says, "but it was difficult to be true to that."

Then she found a small cottage in rural England, which had once been used by Isaac Newton as his personal chapel. The place was for sale, and Ban Breathnach felt compelled to buy it.

Living in Newton's Chapel, as she now does, year round, gave her the chance to once again live a Simple Abundance sort of life.

The story of Moving On, then, is the story of how Ban Breathnach came to appreciate the importance of "home" in her life.

"I think we, as women, create homes for our husbands. We create homes for our children," she says, "And, as a by-product, we get a bed. I bet if you stopped 10 women on the street and asked if they're really comfortable in their homes, most of them would have to admit that there's not much place for them at home, no sanctuary."

If Simple Abundance spelled out a philosophy of living, Moving On offers a practical course in how to make a comfortable life for yourself.

'We do have storage'

"It's about de-cluttering the heart before the closet," Ban Breathnach says, for the first time sounding exactly like the Earth mother-y, New Age-y voice of her books. "The idea for Moving On came when I was cleaning out the attic of my Bethesda, Md., town house [which had once been her primary residence] and getting ready to move into Newton's Chapel. I was going through these boxes, deciding what to ship over. It was the stages of hell."

Ban Breathnach recently remarried and now shares Newton's Chapel with her British husband. When they moved in, she says, there was the challenge of "blending his eclectic tastes" with hers.

"We are still editing," she says diplomatically and then adds, almost desperately, "We do have storage."

It's an ongoing process, she says, this making of a home.

"I think in Moving On," she says, "I wanted to say that in the 10 years since Simple Abundance, life doesn't turn out as you planned. That's pretty universal. And it's not bad. It's good. I'm at peace."