In 2014, I published a novel about a perfumer-herbalist (The Lake). Six or seven years ago, I wanted to create a sort of herbarium describing my favorite flowers and scents. I spoke to some friends about it, then put the idea away in a little corner of my head and wrote Gens du Nord. Then I left Montreal for the Gaspé peninsula: Gespeg  ('the end of the land’ in mi’gmaq language), our Quebec Finistère. This new life a thousand kilometres from my home town, between the sea and the forest, deepened my sensitivity and changed my relationship with nature forever. I revived the idea of a herbarium in 2022 and reworked it to give the project an original direction. I wanted to make a special, intimate book that would present my everyday allies in an oblique way. 

A memoir, a self-portrait, and a grimoire with no fiction, Petite Nature presents and showcases what I call my "everyday allies". These allies are places (even an era), plants (flowers, trees, herbs, weeds), gemstones, artistic practices, colors, animals, an attitude, powerful watercourses, some foods, that once calmed my little nature or that still keep me on the shore.

Published in French (Québec) by éditions Marchand de feuilles, April 2025.

Foreign rights : Perrine Leblanc.