There were seconds-just seconds-as my eyes opened in the morning when the world felt unshrouded again. Then memory returned.' When Jessica regains consciousness in a French hospital on the day after the Paris attacks, all she wants is to flee the terror she's experienced. But Patrick, her steadfast, courageous friend, will not let her surrender to the fear. Worn down by his dogged and perplexing insistence, she reluctantly agrees to follow through with the antiquing road trip they'd planned before the massacre. During a stop in the tiny village of Balazuc, Jessica finds an intriguing piece of history concealed in an antique sewing box. As the owners of a B&B, Grant and Mona, help her to translate the archaic French of a handwritten journal, they uncover the story of Adeline Baillard, a young woman who lived centuries before, during the Huguenot persecution that shook the Kingdom of France. Armed with vague clues into the family's fate, they follow Adeline's descendants from France to England, where pieces of a tragic past converge with the harrowing present to illuminate a hope that cannot be destroyed.
