The Candles of the Great War

The candles of the great war

Two women, a priest, a young peasant and war to burn everything... except desire.

In a rural Burgundy village at the dawn of the Great War, Jeanne Rabut watches her husband Marcel leave for the front. Alone at the farm, she discovers a world deprived of men, where women take back the reins of daily life... and gradually, their freedom.

When Father Léon, a young priest with a congenital limp, arrives to replace the mobilized priest, Jeanne is troubled. Under the pretext of lighting candles for her husband, she visits the church every evening. Obsession is born. The candle Léon hands her becomes the object of her carnal liberation. While church evenings awaken new emotions in Jeanne, another more discreet bond weaves itself with Rose, her sister-in-law. In this daily life upended by men's absence, confidences and tender gestures accumulate, gradually drawing the contours of an unexpected love.

Through ordeals, Jeanne lets herself be guided by her desires, between what troubles her and what reassures her. But war hasn't said its last word and will overturn the fragile balance she dared to invent.

Between sensuality, secrets, and transgressions, The Candles of the Great War is a disturbing fresco of femininity at war, an unconventional love story, of audacity and flesh. Jeanne, Rose, Léon and Antonin build, at chaos's heart, a love freed from rules, genders and duties.

A novel of desire and emancipation, carnal and poignant, where the intimate mingles with the tragic, and where burning a candle becomes an act of resistance.