The Paris of the 1860s is a time of change for Rose Bazelet. A widow living in a neighborhood marked for improvement by the Emperor Napoleon, she takes a stand and vows never to leave her family home. She spends her days reliving memories of her husband and family in the house she has come to love as much as the people who inhabited it.

Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours... Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.