Jean Diwo
Description
His journeyman's cane in hand and his "four-knotted valise" on his shoulder, Jean Cottion arrives at the gates of Paris one sunny day during the reign
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of Louis XI. After working for master carpenters all over France, at the last stage of his tour he finally reaches the door of Pierre Thirion in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Like a vein in wood, the story is carved through the centuries in a lively Parisian borough where the lives of the abbesses of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs mingle with those of the master carpenters, furniture-makers, craftsmen, noblemen, bourgeois and, above all, the women from all walks of life-families united by their love of wood in all of its nobility and liveliness. The Ladies of Faubourg is the first volume of a trilogy that sold more than one million copies. Jean Diwo was born in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; he knew the whirring of the saw, the delicate whistle of the plane, and the acrid smell of the boiling glue. He long dreamed of writing a marvelous novel about this important artery of Paris that was at the heart of so many major historical events. Constructing the framework with chisel and gouge, he produced a historical and human epic full of love, drama and joy, as merry as the inhabitants of the Faubourg.
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