This book is a story. A testimony that reads like a novel. It is the story of a humble life that spanned the course of History.
It is also a wonderful adventure of memory and writing between a mother and her son.
For nearly three years, Gilles Platret, mayor of Chalon and historian, collected and transcribed his mother's memories of her early years in the Chalon region, an area scarred by the demarcation line that separated occupied France from non-occupied France for a time.
Denise, born in 1933, lived through the great drama of the war from her farm, which was cut in two by the crossing of the demarcation line in July 1940. Threats loomed every day, but childhood remained intact, with Grandma Jeanne's sweets, communion with nature and laughter in the school playground.
We devour every page of this book because in it we find a part of ourselves, a part of this rugged and beautiful France, marked by its history and its culture.
France, marked by the land and its demands, by the war and its trials, but also by a humour, a mischievousness and a joie de vivre that shine through at every moment.