Henriette

In the gray aftermath of her husband's funeral, Madame Bernard des Vignes finds herself with nothing left but her son Armand, a sensitive teenager whose devotion has always been her greatest comfort. But the boy is growing into a man, and his eyes have turned toward Henriette, a simple working girl whose humble origins make her unsuitable in every way that matters to Parisian society. As Armand defies his mother to pursue this forbidden love, Madame Bernard must confront the painful truth that her son is slipping away from her, and that the life she built around his affection may have been a house of sand. François Coppée, the poet laureate of Paris's working quarters, brings his intimate knowledge of class divides and tender domestic struggles to this quietly devastating portrait of a mother losing her only anchor to the world. The novel pulses with genuine emotion as it traces the war between a mother's love and a son's rebellion, set against the unyielding machinery of social prejudice.