planning

It began as a dark crime story. It was Christmas Eve, and most people celebrated except Madge Oranmore. She and the good doctor Wiseman were planning to kill a daughter-in-law and her young child. That night before Christmas, two children remained on the beach.

Wonderful tale set in the provincial town of Besançon, and focusing on the de Watteville family – the fiercely religious and independently wealthy wife, the ineffectual husband, who absents himself, spending his days working his lathe and 19-year-old daughter, Rosalie. She falls in love with the mysterious stranger who took up residence a few yards away from her family’s home. Through her maid, herself...