In this beautiful and intense slow burner, war wounded Toussaint Caillet returns home from hospital and the battlefields of the First World War. The tender narrative tells, through the eyes of his wife Jeanne, of the journey back to family life as they begin to build a new understanding of each other and their community. Scarred by the emotional and physical consequences of war, their road to recovery offers the promise of hope for the future.
A wordless world seems to be setting around Jeanne. The battles of these last few years have made her neither a widow nor even - and in the dark she tries to find the epithet that doesn't exist - a mother orphaned by her child. No. The war can strike in other ways. The war can rob people of speech.
She pulls the sheet right up to her hairline, swivels her head. The breathing next to her seems to register a slight skip. Toussaint isn't asleep. She shifts a few centimetres, moves closer and stops only when she is right next to him and finds, through the fabric that separates them, the beginnings of his warmth and his attentive breathing.
