Author(s): Valerie Perrin

Translated Fiction

A poignant bestselling novel full of French charm and memorable characters.

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues.

Violette's routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of a local police chief, Julien Seul, who insists on depositing the ashes of his mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. The grave Julien is looking for, and his mother's story of clandestine love, is intertwined with Violette's own secret past.

The funny, moving, intimately told story of a woman who believes obstinately in happiness, Fresh Water for Flowers brings out the exceptional and the poetic in the ordinary. A delightful, atmospheric, absorbing tale.