Vianne Rochet returns to the French village of Lansquenet with her daughters, Anouk and Rosette, before allying herself with a desperate Father Frances Reynaud to reverse disturbing local changes.

"In the marshy, misty countryside of southwestern France, fourteen-year-old Galla rides her battered bicycle from the private Catholic high school she attends on scholarship to the rocky, barren farm where her family lives. It's a journey she makes every two weeks, forty miles round trip, traveling between opposite poles of ambition and guilt, school and home. Galla's loving, overwhelmed, incompetent mother doesn't want her to go to school; she wants...