It is a curious yet somber truth that the most passionate loves always have the most sorrowful endings. From Abélard and Héloïse to Dante and Beatrice, history will countenance no other outcome. Yet still we continue to love, still we continue to yearn for what history suggests can never happen, still we find people like Jean Luc and Charlotte, the protagonists of our upcoming tale, who deny fate and plunge into love's adamantine bounds. The philosophers among us ponder the contradiction. The poets among us take a deep breath, grab a tissue, and blindly follow the young couple on their journey. For hope, however dim, cannot resist love's spark.

Although Paris of the 1930s remains scarred from the Great War, the depredations of that ghastly conflict cannot diminish the love that blossoms between Jean Luc and Charlotte. The youth enter at once into a redoubtable union that both vow can never be broken. Yet no matter the spiritual bond uniting them, it seems they are destined to be torn apart. Be it the mistakes of youth, or the misguided motives of caretakers, or the devious machinations of the malicious, the young couple ever sway throughout the years from ecstasy to despondency. And then, just as their love finds its firmest ground, war again consumes Europe and presents the pair with their most heartbreaking reality yet.