Two women. One, the red-headed, exuberant Ludovine, is an expert in 20th-century painting. Living for the slings and arrows of outrageous passion, she left – and lost – her husband and two-year-old son for a roll in the hay. When the son suddenly shows back up in her life, 20 years later, it is only to disappear once again after a banal accident befalls Ludovine.

The other woman, Antonia, is 50; a generation older. She joined the Resistance at age 14, was a political activist and part of a troupe of wandering minstrels. Having become a psychoanalyst, she now devotes her time to a charitable organization helping people in dire straits.

Ludovine’s accident plus the assassination of the owner of a well-known art gallery will weave these two women’s pasts and destinies together inextricably, and bring out the characters from the complicated plots of their lives. From Soviet Russia to today’s Paris, Ludovine’s son as well as both women’s lovers, husbands and obsessions’ paths will crisscross over a background of unpredictable and sometimes even outrageous adventures. Only fateful coincidence can tie turn-of-the-century events to the still-haunted and painful – whether buried or cherished – memories of the past.