With his pack on his shoulder and his apprentice stick, Jean Cottion arrives at the gates of Paris on a sunny day of the reign of Louis XI. After having worked for master carpenters all over France, he reaches the door of Pierre Thirion of Faubourg Saint-Antoine as the last stage of his tour. As a vein in the wood, the story is carved through the centuries in a lively Parisian borough, where the lives of the abbesses of Saint-Antoine-des-Champs mingle with those of their friend master carpenters, furniture makers and craftsmen, noblemen, bourgeois… and above all with those of the women from every social condition, those of families united by the love for the wood, noble and living material.
 
 The Dames of Faubourg is the first volume of a trilogy that sold more than a million copies.
 
 Jean Diwo was born in Faubourg Saint-Antoine and he knew the noise of the saw, the delicate whistle of the plane and the acrid smell of the boiling glue. He has long dreamt of writing the marvelous novel of this important artery of Paris, at the heart of the major historical events. In this framework, sketched out with chisel and gouge, he prepared this human mixture, leavened by history, to make a captivating novel, full of love, drama and joy, merry as the women and the men of Faubourg can be.