Lyon, 1990. Matteo Bellini, forty, leaves the neighborhood where he works and goes home after having worked all night. Hit by a car as he’s crossing the street, he realizes that the driver is an old flame.

The story is told in flashback. Twenty-six years earlier, in 1964, a young woman’s family – silk manufacturers, and part of the city’s cynical gentry – tried to marry off their daughter Mathilda, who became pregnant after having been raped; to Matteo, an intelligent but naïve student, who was foreign to their circle, but fascinated by its brilliance.

This atmospheric novel draws readers into the discreet charm of the stately homes in western Lyon, with their well-tended grounds and their tennis courts, and to the beach resorts that were fashionable in those years. Filled with the cars and the fragrances of the times, when 'National Route 7' still existed… as did a distinctly French savoir-vivre.

A young woman from a good family becomes pregnant by accident. To avoid a scandal, her parents recruit a naïve young man who is in love with her and willing to marry her…