Nobody's Girl

A girl walks from Paris to Picardy in search of the grandfather who disowned her mother, and hires herself into his own mill without giving her name. Malot wrote "En famille" in 1893 as the companion to "Sans Famille", with a heroine instead of a hero. The industrial detail — the mill, the wages, the housing — is exact, and the recognition is delayed with real cruelty. Fifty-one plates of Millet and Renoir, from country roads and winnowers to the paths a walker takes, follow the girl's road through France.