Her teenaged Spanish mother abandoned her and left her with the Welfare Office, where officials named her Albertine Damien in honour of the saint of the day she was found on.
[1] Constant quarrels with her adoptive family led to an intense distaste for authority that stayed with her the rest of her life.
Although she was intelligent and did well in her studies, Albertine's family set to annul her adoption and in 1952 placed her in a reformatory school in Marseille, the Refuge of the Good Shepherd.
Albertine worked as a prostitute and the pair were arrested in 1953 after a bungled armed robbery of a dress store.
La Cavale, written in secret during her incarceration in 1961 and 1962, won the Prix des Quatre Jurys in 1966.
Their success allowed the married couple to settle in Montpellier where she wrote her third story, La Traversière.