Un parrain de cendre

Résumé

In 1924, in the village of Treignac in Haut-Limousin, the Peyrissaguet family obtains the Prix Cognacq-Jay, which honors large families. The next year, Gaston Doumergue, president of the Republic, agrees to be the godfather of their twelfth child, a little girl judiciously named Gastounette. Thus begins the strange story of "Tounette," who at the age of four years leads a flock of forty sheep. Later on, forced from the school benches in the month of May, she teaches the sheep conjugations and the addition tables. Hopes based on her godfather prove illusory, and in 1943 she marries a young man who is then drafted into the service of the Vichy government. They are relocated to Thiers, a town in Auvergne where "cats nurse mice, and dogs bark at their tails."