Wolfram Fleischhauer

Paris in the Spring of 1867 ...

... a few days before the official inauguration of the world exposition, the dead body of a child is found in the river Seine. The mother is arrested and accused of infanticide. She denies having killed her child. She claims to have left it at Lariboisière hospital for treatment a few days before. But nobody in the hospital seems to remember anything ...

Paris in the Spring of 1992 ...

... what mystery surrounds a young French woman in a library in Paris who obsessively researches this long forgotten case of infanticide?

Paul, a 27-year-old architect from Chicago who is researching material for his PhD on the 1867 world exposition, needs some of the books the young woman is reading. It does not take long before his interest in her books gives way to an acute interest in her. He watches her, falls in love with her. But she refuses his advances. Until he starts taking an interest in the story she is determined to tell...