Plump and pleasant Janine Piesset and her husband, a plumber, live in a tiny red brick house in a pleasant corner of Roubaix (pop. 98,834). Until recently, their home was a happy one, and its brightest adornment a smart, pretty girl going on seven, whom they call Viviane.
A few miles away from the Piessets in one of the dreariest slums of the same northern French city live wan and wasted Jeanne Derock, a local mill worker, her husband Jean-Baptiste, a wounded war veteran able to do only occasional work, and their five...
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