In 1950s France, Gabrielle is a passionate, free-spirited woman who is in a loveless marriage and falls for another man when she is sent away to the Alps to treat her kidney stones. Gabrielle yearns to free herself and run away with André.

Gabrielle comes from a small village in the South of France at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous--even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José, an honest, loving Spanish farm worker whom they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, she vows that she will never love him and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage, a dashing injured veteran of the Indo-Chinese War who rekindles her long-buried passions. She promises that they will run away together, and he seems to share her desire. Will anyone dare rob her of her right to follow her dreams?—Polly_Kat