Used Book – Les Filles du Houtland, Annie Degroote

This day in 1910 in the flat country is a celebration for the Domonts. Alcime has just bought L'Étoile-des-Flandres, a gleaming, spacious barge aboard which the bargeman and his family will ply canals and rivers. With his wife Hélène, their three daughters Isoline, Mildrède, Hedie, and their youngest, Valère, they are on the cusp of a new life, beautiful at last. It's a victory over poverty, so they celebrate the promise of better days, getting drunk to forget their debt. But during the night, Isoline, the eldest, is raped by the foreman. Silenced and in pain, crushed by the weight of the secret, she withers, gives up, and decides to disappear.

There were three of them. Three sisters, three bargeman's daughters. The fate of each of them, and of the whole family, will then be overturned.

"A teeming novel where hate, love, and death lead a host of characters, often well-defined by an author of generous inventiveness." Michel Marq – La Voix du Nord