1, RUE DES PETITS-PAS

Nathalie Hug deftly recounts village life in post-World War I France. A remarkable fresco of vivid realism and heartfelt emotion.

The winter of 1918-1919. The East of France. The Great War is coming to an end. A small village in Lorraine, only a few miles from the front, is nothing but ruins. Most of the men are dead; the women and children are struggling to survive. Nobody has been spared the tragedies of war, but life must go on. It is time to rebuild, to reopen shops, to start living again in spite of old wounds. Louise, an orphan at the age of sixteen, knows all about poverty and violence. Taken in by a midwife, she is learning the trade of delivering babies, treating the complaints of expecting mothers and lending a sympathetic ear. A scarred heroine, Louise knows more about darkness than light. But she is determined to move on, to have a better life, to learn to read and write, to raise a child and - most importantly - to love. With each passing day at 1, rue des Petits-Pas she will discover quite simply what being a woman really means. But in the remote village of eastern France, local legends feed into fear, and hatred keeps the villagers going. The war wasn't over with the signing of the Armistice. Nathalie Hug lives in eastern France. She has co-written several thrillers with Jérôme Camut and is the author of two solo novels published by Calmann-Lévy : The Nothing Child (2011) and Miss Ticks-Tacks (2012) which has been selected by the French Institute magazine, Fiction France.