1871 - Saint-Mihiel - EN

After the war, nothing truly returns to its place.

At the House in the Meadows, near Saint-Mihiel, Gertrude and Juta have survived fire, exile, and winter. In the farm that sheltered them, they have learned to live together, to depend on one another, and then to stop hiding what binds them. Around them, however, the world grows peaceful only on the surface. Lorraine remains occupied, the roads still carry the weariness of battle, and peace is being rebuilt under the gaze of the victors.

Little by little, their refuge opens. Women come to read, to ask for help, to seek care, advice, a place where they may set down what the war has damaged. Between the Saint-Mihiel fair, visits, poorly healed wounds and unexpected encounters, Gertrude and Juta discover that survival is no longer enough: they must now choose how to live in a country that is no longer entirely their own.

In this wounded Lorraine, the simplest gestures take on new weight. To welcome, to care, to protect, to desire, to remain faithful: every decision commits more than one heart. What began as a closed refuge becomes the first circle of a wider world, where other women, in turn, are trying to stand upright.

1871 — Saint-Mihiel continues The House in the Meadows and opens the Lorraine cycle onto an occupied, anxious, still-living province. A postwar novel of intimate reconstruction and female bonds, where History is not played out only in treaties, but in houses, bodies, and daily choices.

Translated from French by Ysis