Marie-Ange Hawkins has the kind of childhood that most people dream of. Freedom, love and security in a beautiful old French chateau. But at the age of eleven, a tragic accident sees her orphaned and alone. Sent to America, to live with her great-aunt on a farm in Iowa, she is bitterly resented by the old woman. Marie-Ange is forced to work tirelessly on the farm, dreaming only of the day she can return to her beloved Chateau de Marmouton.
Then, just after her twenty-first birthday, an unexpected visitor brings startling news and an extraordinary gift: the freedom to return to France, to Chateau de Marmouton.
Danielle Steel's powerful new novel is about being pulled into a place where nothing is what it seems. It is about being seduce and lied to and turned around, and wanting to believe the lies - until the moment comes, in one blinding instant, when survival and salvation depend upon a final leap of faith; the only path to freedom, and life.