The wetnurse has swapped the babies.
One alive child for one newly dead.
Sylvaine's belly is empty and vacant, but her breasts are still full of white unctuous milk. Milk that is far more valuable to the world than her role as her baby's mother. Facing poverty, she has no choice but to pull her own child away from its life source and take in another woman's child in its place.
One night under a burning red moon, deep in the forest near her rural cottage, Sylvaine discovers an abandoned baby only a few hours old in a clearing, and beside it, a notebook. She is compelled to take the foundling into her care and raise it alongside the one she is nursing. But when one baby dies suddenly in the night, Sylvaine decides to permanently switch it for the other. A mother for a mother. A mouth for a mouth.
What appears at first to be a propulsive tale of the wetnurse soon enough gathers velocity, galloping between the decision Sylvaine has made and the lie she must keep and another unfolding story, one found in the pages of the notebook left by the newborn, of a young farm girl impregnated by her master.
THE WETNURSE is a brutal and beautiful feminist debut thriller about the lives of 18th-century village women; the domination of men over their bodies and their tooth and nail fight for survival. Séverine Cressan's debut has sold over 30,000 copies in France since publication in early Fall 2025. It has been shortlisted for many prizes including the Prix du roman FNAC, Prix Première Plume Furet du Nord, Prix Talents Cultura and for the Grand Prix des lectrices de ELLE. And now, the Graal: selected for Prix des libraires. It has been hailed as a 'literary revelation' by the French press.
Praise for THE WETNURSE
"This first novel is like a wave that sweeps you away and tosses you about, leaving you
emotionally drained on the shore."
Alexandra Schwartzbrod, Libération
A sublime text of rare power.
Sandrine Bajos, Le Parisien
