Schooled in the ancient beliefs of the Breton people by her mother, the beautiful Hél&ène grows up feeling detached from the nineteenth-century world around her and yet destined for a terrible vocation: to do the work of l'Ankou, death's henchman. Beginning with the demise of her very own mama, she leaves a trail of devastation with the special soups and cakes she makes -those who taste them never recover. Jean Teulé brings his unique blend of imagination and historical insight to a novel that is both an upbeat portrait of nineteenth-century provincial French life and a startling chronicle of a decades-long killing spree carried out by the most notorious female poisoner in history.
