The Transhumance

Provence, spring 1480. One man, one notebook, one hundred and fifty kilometres of ancient drove roads. And something that will never fit into any column of accounts.Noé de Barras is a transhumance conductor. Every spring, he descends from the Pre-Alps of Digne toward the blazing plains of Aix, drives tens of thousands of sheep north to the alpine pastures of Savines, and keeps his ledgers in ink with the precision of a man who knows the road forgives nothing.He is also co-lord of a crumbling, deserted village, captain-viguier of Seyne, and a husband of one year to an intelligent woman carrying their first child. A man of order. A man of known roads.This transhumance will be like no other.Across the stages between the Luberon and the Durance, through a Provençal society riven by merchants' schemes, competing seigneurial powers, and clashing jurisdictions, Noé will cross paths with a woman — a widow, learned, free within the narrow limits her century allows — who carries in her travelling satchel something heavier than archive papers.Six words in Occitan. In the margin of a shepherd's notebook. On the only page that has nothing to do with sheep.La Transhumance is a novel of bodies and silence, of faithfulness and night roads, of a time when Provence was not yet French and men kept their notebooks the way they kept a promise. Slow, sensory, precise prose, rooted in rigorous historical reconstruction — for readers who want fiction to carry them into a whole world, complete with the scent of white limestone, ice-cold fountain water, and impossible choices.Step onto the drove roads of medieval Provence. Some journeys are never just about the flock.Literary historical novel Medieval slow burn romance Historical legal thriller Archive fiction Medieval road novel Provençal pastoral fiction Occitan literature French regional fiction Forbidden love in the Middle Ages Novel of silent tension Adult literary romance Indirect epistolary fiction Rigorous historical reconstruction Real historical characters Medieval archives Angevin Provence 15th century Novel of bodies and silence Medieval slow burn love Historical love triangle Courtly romance Seigneurial intrigue Power and desire in the Middle Ages Novel of loyalty and betrayal Historical intimate fiction Learned medieval widow Free woman in the 15th century Historical travel journal Provence Alps transhumance Pastoral world novel Drove roads and alpine pastures Novel of margins and secrets In-between fiction Based on true events Medieval document fiction. Read more