Fecondity: A Family's Increase

Paris at the turn of the century tells young families to be sensible, to want less, to have fewer. But Mathieu and Marianne Froment choose otherwise. In a small apartment filled with children's voices, with another baby on the way, they defy a fashionable society that treats a large family as ruin and a child as a burden. While the wealthy Moranges guard their single daughter against the future, and the aristocratic Ségurs shelter one sickly heir, the Froments pour their hearts into the unlikeliest of projects: a barren, stony estate called Chantebled, which they believe can be made to bloom. This sweeping saga follows one family across half a century, from Paris ateliers to wheat fields, through births and bereavements, scandal and hard-earned abundance. Zola's impassioned hymn to life, written in exile after J'Accuse, becomes here a vivid, intimate story for today's readers. Part of Timeless Classics.