Rod Édouard – Luisita: The Baudruz are a family of peasant farmers from a small village in La Côte (Lake Geneva between Lausanne and Geneva). The father, free thinker, seventy years “without bending his back”, leads the farm – the best run of the village – with his two sons, Pierre and Gaspard twins very dissimilar, one wise and the other a little draws flan, a little drunk, as well as with Pierre’s wife, Julie. Proud of their wine, all work hard despite the vagaries of the work of the vine, the weather and the development of phylloxera. Édouard Rod describes the life of a Vaud village in the past century with a lot of truth: there is the pastor, who crosses “by short” the field of Baudruz to visit a neighbor sick but does not refuse a glass of white, the regent (the teacher) a young man from elsewhere and proud of his knowledge, the trustee (the mayor) who is at loggerheads with the Baudruz, the postman and all the others … But now that uncle Charles, who ” would run the five part of the world, “died in a hospital in Buenos Aires. What to do with the orphan, Luisita Baudruz?

Édouard Rod, born in 1857 in Ropraz, is a Vaudois writer established in Paris, a friend of Zola, Maupassant and Barres. A well-known critic, Édouard Rod first wrote “naturalistic” novels in the manner of Émile Zola, then released himself from this influence, he endeavored to present cases of conscience, moral dilemmas. He died in Grasse in 1910. An Edouard Rod Award was founded in 1996 at the instigation of Jacques Chessex, also of Ropraz.