Amber Beads and a Blue Dress, Book 1 Marie

This book is set in a small village in the French Dauphiné Alps The village is the home of the fictional Lochu family.
Marie Lochu is twenty seven years old and has two young children, Claude and Jeanette. Her husband, Gerard, a conscript in the French army, is away from the village fighting in Algeria. Marie falls for the charms of a visiting English lecturer, resulting in the birth of a daughter, Sophie. When Gerard returns to the village he is devastated to discover his wife’s infidelity and takes refuge in the mountains. Eventually there is a reconciliation and the story follows the family’s adventures in the village and elsewhere in France over the next eighteen years  It concludes with Sophie’s discovery of her true parentage and her search for her natural father in England.